UC-HRLJF. 


LIBRARY 

OF   THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

GIKT    OK 


Received 
Accessions 


,  189  /  . 
Shelf  No. 


7?.   TJ'.  Murplty.  ^f.  T). 


A 

KEY  TO  THE  SECRET  VAULT. 


Solution  of  Man*s  Origin; 

THE 

Philosophy  of  His  Present   Condition; 

AND 

His  Future  Destiny* 


BY 

ROBERT  WILSON  MURPHY,  M.D. 


SAN    FRANCISCO: 


±890. 


• 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  eighteen 
hundred  and  ninety, 

BY  ROBERT  WILSON  MURPHY,  M.  D., 


In  the  office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress,  at  Washing- 
ton, D.C. 


ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED. 


You  cannot  judge  of  a  book  by  its  cover.  "Uni- 
forms are  often  masks,"  said  Wellington.  A  cow- 
ard may  be  wrapped  up  in  a  red  coat  with  gilded 
buttons  ;  so  error  may  be  bound  in  red  morocco ; 
deadly  poison  may  be  gilt-edged ;  immoral  pictures, 
obscene  thoughts,  vulgar  sayings  degrading  to  the 
intellect,  contaminating  the  moral  nature,  may  be 
put  in  the  most  attractive  forms  in  order  to  catch 
the  thoughtless  and  corrupt  the  innocent. 

All  books  ought  to  be  transcripts  of  good  minds. 
For  in  the  study  of  the  book  we  are  studying  the 
author  of  the  book.  We  can  know  but  little  of  an 
author  save  by  the  study  of  his  works  ;  critics  may 
pronounce  for  or  against  a  book  in  accordance  with 
their  notions  or  personal  idiosyncrasies  and  the 


ii  PREFATORY. 

style  of  the  author,  whether  dull  or  dynamic,  clear 
or  keen  cut. 

The  method  of  expression  has  much  to  do  both 
with  the  popularity  and  value  of  a  book. 

Often  the  plainest  and  cheapest  binding  may 
contain  the  treasures  of  long  years  of  the  best 
thought  of  the  good  and  great,  the  brightest  gems 
that  will  enrich  the  race  and  lift  mankind  to  the 
highest  plain  of  mental  and  moral  wealth.  The 
healthy  mind  will  search  for  truth  as  for  hid 
treasure,  search  until  it  find  the  key  to  the  compli- 
cated lock. 

The  architect  who  embodies  his  thought  in  tem- 
ple or  tower,  only  reproduces  himself  in  thought 
forms,  the  beautiful  and  the  true,  and  he  must  be 
judged  by  the  product  of  his  own  genius.  To  judge 
of  an  architectural  monument  the  critic  must  have 
correct  perspective.  Form,  light,  shade  and  color 
have  fixed  laws  ;  the  laws  of  optics  are  strictly 
mathematical ;  hence  they  are  immutable  and  not 
subject  to  the  notions  of  the  critics  ;  but  while 
truth  is  niany-sided  there  is  only  one  point  of  per- 


PREFATORY.  iii 

spective  where  the  whole  is  seen  from  the  stand- 
point of  the  artist. 

To  reach  this  position  requires  at  least  two 
things  :  a  desire  to  know  the  truth  and  a  surrender 
of  all  prejudice  and  self-conceit.  Some  long  estab- 
lished dogma,  or  pet  creed,  educational  bent  of 
mind  may  cause  such  mental  aberration,  that  the 
unchangeable  law  will  seem  to  make  the  long  short, 
the  straight  crooked,  or  the  worse  to  appear  the 
better  reason.  Truth  is  often  mistaken  for  error, 
and  error  taken  for  truth. 

Mental  aberration  is  the  father  of  a  numerous 
progeny— critics,  cranks,  dementia,  mania  and  mad- 
ness are  but  normal  growths  of  ignorance  and 
prejudice.  Mind,  mad  with  error  attacks  the  truth 
like  a  wounded  bear  in  defense  of  her  cubs.  Igno- 
rance and  prejudice  carry  their  own  two-feet  rule 
by  which  they  measure  truth  and  mind. 

It  requires  more  moral  courage  to  defend  the 
truth  in  the  face  of  the  multitude  than  to  spike  an 
enemy's  battery. 

Mind,  giving  expression  to  the  truth  is  always 


iv  PREFATORY. 

divinely  supported  ;  truth  cannot  be  conquered  ; 
it  may  be  taken  prisoner  and  shut  up  in  a  dungeon 
for  a  while,  but  release  will  come,  and  it  will  at 
last  triumph. 

"  The  immortal  years  of  God  are  her's." 

The  heliocentric  system  was  a  philosophic  truth 
long  before  Descartes  made  his  demonstration. 
Truth  is  none  the  less  true  because  the  majority 
may  reject  it.  The  multitude  may  mob  Galileo, 
the  priests  may  threaten,  but  the  world  moves 
on — just  as  the  moon  does  though  the  dogs  may 
continue  to  bark  at  it. 

Some  people  are  intellectual  idolaters ;  moral 
enthusiasts ;  religious  fanatics  ;  they  prefer  to  live 
in  darkness  and  feed  on  falsehood  and  die  from 
starvation,  rather  than  to  confess  ignorance  and 
retract  error.  Intellectual  pride  prefers  darkness 
to  being  illuminated  by  obscurity  with  a  torch  in 
his  hand. 

Some,  as  Ephraim  are  joined  to  their  idols — 
intellectual  idolaters  beyond  the  reach  of  any  Evan- 
gelist ;  the  author  has  written  for  them  also.  To 


PREFATORY..  v 

Understand  a  book,  read  preface  and  page  without 
prejudice,  and  from  the  proper  perspective — the 
stand-point  of  the  author.  Take  a  bird's-eye  view, 
so  as  to  take  in  the  whole  by  seeing  all  the  parts 
in  their  true  relations. 

What  can  we  know  of  the  parts  of  a  temple  till 
the  superstructure  is  completed  and  the  top-stone 
is  finished  ?  Wait  until  you  read  the  last  line  of 
the  last  chapter  in  a  book  before  you  pronounce 
judgment  or  say,  Grace,  grace  unto  it. 

Every  man  was  made  to  think  for  himself,  and 
if  he  think  logically  and  honestly  he  will  be  heard. 
The  Author  attempts  a  survey  of  an  unfenced  terri- 
tory— Man,  his  spiritual  origin  ;  present  condition 
and  future  destiny. 

The  book  is  his  field  notes  to  be  examined  and 
worked  up  by  others. 

Read  it,  topic  and  page,  preface  and  finis. 


iott  4     an's     twi 


THE  BOOK  OF  NATUEE. 

"Speak  to  the  Earth  and  it  shall  teach  thee."— JOB. 

The  Book  of  Nature  is  a  transcript  of  the  Author 
himself.  A  record  of  his  thought  and  a  manifesta- 
tion of  his  will  power.  The  study  and  knowledge 
of  this  wonderful  volume  will  bring  man  nearer  the 
heart  of  the  Great  Author,  and  enable  him  to  read 
these  ancient  records. 

Nature  not  only  stimulates  thought,  but  it  is 
the  great  volume  which  furnished  thought  in  the 
purest  and  most  beautiful  forms.  It  is  thought  in 
the  original  forms  of  language ;  the  symbols  of 
thought,  emotion,  beauty,  power ;  a  transcript  of 
the  Divine  Mind ;  his  plans,  laws  and  methods  of 
work,  and  final  design. 

Job  reveals  a  great  truth  when  he  declares  that 


2  THE  BOOK  OF  NATURE* 

Earth  is  commissioned  to  teach  man,  and  reveals 
also  the  method  of  the  Teacher.  The  secret  key 
is  put  into  man's  hands,  the  great  store-house  of 
learning  is  opened,  the  secrets  are  within  mortal 
grasp ;  yet  nature  keeps  no  free  schools  ;  issues 
no  free  tickets  to  any  of  her  libraries  of  learning. 
"  Speak,"  is  the  divine  price  of  knowledge  ;  interro* 
gate ;  desire  to  know  ;  free  yourself  from  all  preju- 
dice ;  look  at  her  truths  from  the  right  stand-point, 
and  in  the  right  spirit ;  then  she  will  unfold  her 
sacred  scrolls,  and  answer  your  questions. 

She  has  epics  and  lyrics  for  the  poet ;  cartoons, 
friezes  and  sculptured  beauty  for  the  artist ;  points^ 
lines,  cones  and  motions  for  the  mathematician  ; 
rocks,  fossils,  eruptions,  ripple-marks  and  revo- 
lutions for  the  antiquary;  plans  and  purposes^ 
progress  and  power*  under  the  personal  control  of 
the  divine  mind  working  out  the  onward  march  of 
the  centuries — all  in  the  interests  of  man. 

These  records  of  primeval  history,  written  upon 
the  rocks  in  sacred  hieroglyph  by  the  finger  of 
God ;  these  immeasurable  cycles  of  untold  ages 
and  strange  revolutions,  all  in  the  interests  of 
man,  may  be  translated  by  man,  who  holds  the 
key  to  the  secret  vault. 


OEIGIN  AND  LAW  OF  MATTEE  FOKMS. 

"  Things  which  are  seen  were  not  made  of  things  which  do 
appear." — PAUL. 

The  first  chapter  in  the  history  of  the  earth 
reveals  a  formless  void  ;  a  mass,  immensely  vast, 
yet  with  limits,  but  in  great  confusion,  enveloped 
in  darkness  —  unorganized  material  akin  to  the 
heavenly  planets  before  their  birth.  The  Divine 
Intelligence  brooded  over  the  shapeless  mass,  as  a 
dove  upon  her  own  eggs.  Atoms  combined  into 
molecules,  molecules  into  substances.  Substances 
took  the  form  of  gases,  and  gases  combined  into 
substantial  forms  of  matter,  by  the  law  of  affinities  ; 
dissimilar  atoms  were  wedded  by  a  divine  law  of 
love ;  particle  united  with  particle  and  formed 
masses,  and  masses  were  formed  into  worlds. 

The  Divine  Mind  but  gave  expression  to  a  still 
higher  thought  and  unfolded  a  prophecy  of  a  wider 
plan,  when  the  Great  Architect  gave  the  new  earth 
a  place  among  the  sister  planets. 

It  had  form,  and  he  gave  it  motion  upon  its  axis 
and  in  its  orbit,  but  earth  was  without  life  ;  it  was 


4  ORIGIN  AND  LAW  OF  MATTER  FORMS. 

still  covered  with  thick  darkness  ;  by  an  Almighty 
fiat  and  in  accord  with  divine  law,  light  came  and 
drove  away  the  darkness,  and  the  vast  planetary 
system,  complete  in  its  mechanism,  began  its 
mission  in  the  interests  of  the  higher  order  of 
beings,  man  being  the  climax  of  the  divine  plan. 

The  sun,  but  newly  created  and  but  feeble  in  his 
power,  yet  needed  another  force  to  counteract  the 
solar  attraction.  The  attraction  of  gravitation,  or 
the  persistent  will  force  of  the  Deity.  Without 
this  law  of  antagonism  the  sun  would  very  soon  rob 
our  planet  of  its  vitality,  but  this  law  of  attraction 
is  so  wisely  adjusted,  that  it  restores  what  other- 
wise would  be  dissipated  by  the  sun's  action,  or 
the  earth  would  become  parched  and  unfit  for  the 
home  of  any  kind  of  life. 

This  law  of  antagonism  is  divine  in  its  origin 
and  includes  in  its  range  all  forms  of  existence, 
animate  and  inanimate ;  it  is  the  great  law  by 
which  the  onward  progress  of  the  world  is  accom- 
plished, from  the  lowest  to  the  highest  forms  of 
life.  By  it  the  balancings  of  nature  are  secured ; 
by  it  the  mists  are  lifted  up,  the  clouds  surrender 
their  treasure ;  and  the  floods  are  carried  back  to 
the  sea  ;  the  moaning  winds,  the  muttering  thunder 


ORIGIN  AND  LAW  OF  MATTER  FORMS.  5 

and  the  vivid  lightning  put  to  confusion  the  atmos- 
phere, purify  the  earth,  and  prophesy  of  man. 

Man  himself  is  subject  to  the  same  law.  He 
swings  from  one  extremity  of  the  arc  to  the  other, 
till  at  last  he  settles  down  at  the  point  of  progress 
and  moves  forward.  The  next  generation  moves 
in  the  same  way,  only  in  a  longer  arc,  and  finds  a 
higher  resting  point.  One  generation  is  sacrificed 
for  another,  as  forests  feed  on  the  rich  soil  of  their 
predecessors.  Men  are  persecuted  in  one  age  and 
die  martyrs,  but  the  next  age  makes  heroes  of  them 
and  builds  monuments  over  their  graves. 

Scientific  and  philosophic  and  religious  truths 
are  persecuted  in  one  age  and  immortalized  in 
another ;  laughed  at  and  driven  out  of  the  world, 
then  ushered  in  with  music  and  banners  and  shouts 
of  the  multitude. 

The  see-saw  of  civilizations,  nations  and  empires 
has  been  a  forward  movement  over  the  graves  of 
the  buried  past.  The  dead  past  is  but  the  prelude 
of  the  onward  future  ;  out  of  the  ruins  of  the  old 
come  the  institutions  of  the  new.  Thus  the  majestic 
procession  moves  on  to  perfection.  Matter  and 
mind  alike  are  under  the  general  superintendence 
of  the  All- Wise. 


LIFE  AN  ENDOWMENT. 

"  One  indissoluble  chain  of  affinity  binds  together  all  nature.'1' 

— HUMBOLDT. 

"Give  me  matter,  and  I  will  explain  the  formation  of  a  world; 
but  give  me  matter  only,  and  I  cannot  explain  the  formation  of  a 
caterpillar."— KANT. 

The  planets  are  a  great  brotherhood.  Sun  and 
earth  are  made  of  the  same  materials ;  made  on 
the  same  plan  ;  bear  the  same  image — the  Author 
is  one.  Thirteen  elements  principally  compose  the 
earth.  Only  four  of  these  are  prominent — oxygen, 
carbon,  silicon  and  hydrogen  are  the  principal 
material  in  world-building. 

Professor  Huxley  reduces  all  material  substances 
to  water,  ammonia  and  carbonic  acid.  Oxygen  is 
the  chief  basis  of  the  planetary  worlds,  being  about 
equal  to  all  other  elements. 

Who  made  the  atom  ?  What  architect  con- 
structed atoms  into  worlds  ?  Who  gave  the  atom 
motion  and  form  ?  Who  developed  it  in  accordance 
with  a  great  plan  ? 


LIFE  AN  ENDOWMENT.  7 

"  The  genesis  of  an  atom  is  no  easier  to  conceive  than  the  genesis 
of  a  planet."— HERBERT  SPENCER. 

Admit  the  existence  of  the  atom,  who  or  what 
gave  it  a  start  ?  Or  could  it  move  itself  ?  Sir 
Isaac  Newton  denied  that  the  force  of  gravity  was 
in  the  atom,  and  Faraday,  the  greatest  modern 
thinker  on  this  subject,  pronounces  the  dynamical 
theory  absurd. 

"  When  nature  underneath  a  heat) 
Of  jarring  atoms  lay, 

And  could  not  heave  her  head, 
The  tuneful  voice  was  heard  from  high, 
Arise,  ye  more  than  dead !  "    — DRYDEN. 

Man  may  not  be  permitted  to  know  much  about 
gross  matter,  yet  he  may  have  some  insight  into 
nature's  methods  and  the  plans  of  the  Author  of 
nature.  Primary  among  his  methods  must  be  the 
law  of  affinity,  that  mysterious  power  by  which 
heterogeneous  elements  are  drawn  together  and 
held  in  their  places  to  form  gases  and  grosser 
forms  of  matter.  Oxygen  is  not  water  ;  Hydrogen 
is  not  water  ;  but  combine  the  two  in  the  right  pro- 
portion and  water  is  the  resultant — that  is,  water 
is  created  or  produced  from  that  which  was  not 
water. 


8  LIFE  AN  ENDOWMENT. 

The  methods  of  the  Author  of  nature  may  be 
examined,  for  the  law  by  which  they  are  combined 
is  exact,  mathematical ;  it  is  the  law  of  chemical 
equivalents.  This  great  law  gives  the  method  of 
the  formation  of  all  inanimate  substances  ;  gases, 
rocks,  metals,  etc.  So  that  "things  which  are  seen 
were  not  made  of  things  which  do  appear."  By 
the  analysis  of  matter  we  find  the  world  is  built 
upon  mathematical  law,  and  hence  its  Author  is 
the  Great  Mathematician.  The  chemical  world  is 
built  upon  the  laws  of  arithmetical  proportion  ; 
the  world  of  forms,  crystals,  mountains,  and  worlds 
with  their  motions  in  space,  are  all  constructed  in 
accord  with  geometrical  laws ;  mineralogy  is  divine, 
solid  geometry. 

The  visible  world  is  a  divine  system  of  spheres, 
cubes,  squares,  angles,  lines  in  motion ;  geometrical 
forms  moving  according  to  geometrical  law.  Here 
man  holds  the  key  to  the  secret  of  inorganic  matter 
and  nature-forms ;  but  is  there  a  key  to  organic 
forms  ?  Will  the  law  of  affinities  account  for  vege- 
table and  animal  forms  ? 


THE  PKOCESS  OF  DEVELOPMENT  IN 
VEGETABLE  AND  ANIMAL  LIFE. 

"  The  rounded  world  is  fair  to  see, 
Nine  times  folded  in  mystery; 

Though  baffled  seers  cannot  impart 

The  secret  of  its  laboring  heart. 
Throb  thine  with  nature's  throbbing  breast 
And  all  is  clear  from  East  to  West"— EMERSON. 

The  separation  of  the  water  from  the  land  was  a 
physical  necessity  to  the  production  and  develop- 
ment of  vegetable  and  animal  life.  Divine  intelli- 
gence gives  a  key  to  his  thought  and  great  plans 
in  the  production  of  the  lowest  forms  of  life; 
the  revelations  of  these  plans  are  seen  especially 
in  the  construction  of  the  first  forms  of  animal  life. 
The  fish  is  not  the  first  form  of  man,  not  the  first 
cast  of  the  divine  Artist,  but  it  is  the  prophecy  of 
the  coming  man. 

"Man  is  the  purpose  toward  which  the  whole  animal  creation 
tends  from  the  first  appearance  of  the  first  paleozoicfish."— AaASSiz. 

But  before  vegetable  or  animal  forms  could  have 
place,  the  law  of  antagonisms  must  be  wisely  ad- 
justed and  put  in  force  ;  this  is  a  higher  law  than 


10  VEGETABLE  AND  ANIMAL  LIFE. 

the  law  of  combination  or  chemical  affinity,  or  the 
mathematical  law  of  form  ;  it  includes  the  thought 
of  force,  motion  and  personal  superintendence. 

The  currents  of  wind  set  in  motion  by  solar  heat, 
swept  over  the  great  deep,  setting  the  waves  in 
motion,  which  being  resisted  and  curbed  by  the 
antagonizing  force  of  gravity ;  so  that  the  mad 
billows,  by  this  action  and  reaction  were  decom- 
posed and  another  elementary  force  liberated ;  that 
most  subtle  agent,  electricity,  which  plays  so  great 
a  part  in  the  phenomena  and  among  the  forces  of 
the  world.  It  is  the  indispensable  agent  in  the 
development  of  vegetable  and  animal  life. 

There  is  not  an  ocean  wave,  a  roaring  cataract  or 
wailing  wind  that  sweeps  the  mountain  or  the 
plain  ;  or  wing  of  bird  or  bee  that  beats  the  air  in 
its  daily  flight,  but  generates  electricity ;  every 
particle  of  this  magnetic  fluid  is  vitalized.  These 
forces  are  correlated  into  vegetable  forms  of  life, 
these  again  into  animal  forms,  and  these  into 
spiritual  forms. 

Perhaps  not  more  than  a  millionth  part  of  the 
sun's  light  and  heat  and  solar  attraction  reaches 
our  earth  ;  and  yet  these  forces  are  so  well  ad- 
justed that  they  are  just  enough  to  nicely  antago- 


VEGETABLE  AND  ANIMAL  LIFE.  H 

nize  the  force  of  gravity  in  our  planet  and  keep  all 
balanced.  The  final  result  and  product  of  these 
antagonizing  forces  is  the  life-giving  principles  ; 
intelligence  with  all  its  wonderful  pontentialities. 

Sun  and  earth,  the  positive  and  negative  agents, 
are  working  in  harmony  with  God,  the  divine 
Intelligence  and  personal  power  operating  through 
them  by  his  divine  law  of  antagonistic  forces. 

This  law  is  not  some  force  put  into  matter  and 
there  left  to  operate  itself  ;  nothing  is  left  to  blind 
fate ;  but  the  divine  Intelligence  is  ever  present 
directing  the  evolution  of  vegetable  and  animal 
life. 

INDIVIDUAL  LIFE  FORMS. 

There  is  a  universal  stamp  put  upon  all  organic 
being  that  is  divine  in  its  origin,  inherent  and 
transmissible  in  its  history.  Individuality  has 
permanent  and  fixed  laws,  immutable  through  all 
ages  ;  each  after  its  own  kind  is  the  divine  law  of 
living  beings.  There  is  no  accidental  law.  The 
great  Author  is  present  unfolding  his  plans  in  all 
vegetable  and  animal  forms,  in  all  the  past ;  flower 
and  fish,  forest  and  family  have  kept  their  forms 
and  preserved  their  habits,  amid  all  the  revolutions 
of  time.  The  flowers  we  cultivate  in  garden  or 


12  VEGETABLE  AND  ANIMAL  LIFE. 

home  continue  to  preserve  their  individuality  and 
unfold  their  beauty  from  seeds  produced  years  ago 
in  other  climes  ;  the  form,  color  and  odor  remain 
as  permanent  elements  of  character.  There  seem 
to  be  some  exceptions  both  in  the  vegetable  and 
animal  world,  which  are  only  freaks  of  nature ; 
these  will  be  treated  in  their  proper  places. 

This  law  of  life  is  most  remarkable  and  beneficial 
to  man  and  divinely  wise.  In  man  it  seems  to 
blend  with  the  different  races,  but  only  to  produce 
another  variety  ;  the  type  remains  unchanged. 

There  may  be  some  truth  in  the  Darwinian 
theory,  but  it  is  not  all  true.  Man  never  sprang 
from  the  monkey  or  the  baboon  or  any  mere  ani- 
mal, but  was  created  a  separate,  independent  type. 

Monkeys  and  baboons  never  show  any  moral 
qualities  ;  no  reverence  for  the  Divine  Being ;  no 
disposition  to  worship ;  they  are  not  capable  of 
any  moral  development ;  for  them  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  science.  These  permanent,  historical  facts 
are  conclusive  evidence  that  man  has  a  higher  ori- 
gin than  mere  animal  being ;  that  no  centuries  can 
change  one  type  of  being  into  another. 

There  may  be  some  striking  resemblance  between 
the  physical  anatomy  of  man  and  some  animals. 


VEGETABLE  AND  ANIMAL  LIFE.  13 

There  is  some  resemblance  between  the  oak  tree 
and  the  walnut ;  but  as  the  walnut  could  not  come 
from  the  oak,  much  more  man  could  not  come  from 
the  baboon. 

Man  has  an  animal  nature,  but  is  more  than  an 
animal ;  he  possesses  a  high  spiritual  and  moral 
nature  that  lifts  him  above  the  beasts  of  the  field 
and  links  him  to  something  higher.  Man  intel- 
lectually has  made  great  advancement ;  his  history 
is  one  of  grand  achievements  and  great  acquire- 
ments in  knowledge. 

His  genius  is  seen  in  his  inventions,  in  the  arts 
and  sciences,  philosophy  and  poetry,  and  mechani- 
cal pursuits ;  bringing  the  elements  under  his  con- 
trol and  making  them  serve  him.  He  harnesses 
the  unseen  forces  about  him  like  steeds  to  his 
chariots,  and  guides  and  controls  them  as  with  bit 
and  bridle.  He  measures  the  stars  and  calls  them 
by  name,  and  weighs  the  planets  in  his  scales. 

Man  has  moral  powers  unlimited  in  their  range. 
Most  of  the  animals  show  some  capacity  for  a  cer- 
tain kind  of  education,  but  it  is  man's  moral  quali- 
ties that  distinguish  him  from  the  lower  animals, 
and  make  him  a  companion  of  the  angels  and 
entitle  him  to  a  Divine  revelation  for  his  guide. 


14  VEGETABLE  AND  ANIMAL  LIFE. 

He  is  a  moral  agent,  free  to  act  for  himself, 
only  limited  by  the  laws  of  his  own  freedom  ;  this 
enables  him  to  hold  communion  with  God  and  to 
receive  a  certain  amount  of  Divine  love  and  truth 
so  as  to  mingle  with  his  spiritual  nature. 

"O  rich  and  various  man !  Thou  palace  of  sight  and  sound,  carry- 
ing in  thy  senses  the  morning  and  the  night  and  the  unfathomably 
galaxy ;  in  thy  brain  the  geometry  of  the  city  of  God ;  in  thy  heart 
the  power  of  love  and  the  realms  of  right  and  wrong."— EMEBSON. 

Man  has  the  power  to  unlock  the  secret  history 
of  the  past,  raise  the  dead  from  their  rocky  tombs 
and  unloose  the  tongue  of  the  forgotten  ages.  He 
is  the  head  of  an  ascending  series,  the  last  term, 
the  objective  point  in  creation.  For  him  the  un- 
told centuries  have  lived ;  atoms  have  been  com- 
bined into  worlds  ;  flowers  have  bloomed  and  died  ; 
millions  of  beings  have  walked  the  earth,  then  have 
been  transmuted  into  soils  ;  revolutions  have  lifted 
the  mountain  systems ;  formed  the  valleys  ;  cut 
the  river  channels  and  purified  the  atmosphere  ;  all 
for  the  preparation  of  the  human  home,  the  com- 
plete development  of  the  race,  and  to  unlock  the 
secrets  of  matter  and  mind,  and  bridge  the  gulf 
between  life  and  death. 


THE  KEY  TO  THE  LAW  OF  EVOLUTION. 

"  The  universe  is  the  realized  thought  of  God." — CARLYLE. 
"  Mind  is  God's  first  end."— CHANNINQ. 

"All  really  scientific  experience  tells  us,  that  life  can  be  produced 
from  a  living  antecedent  only"— UNSEEN  UNIVERSE. 

The  universe,  including  man,  is  an  evolution  of 
God.  This  is  the  only  evolution  possible  to  thought. 
This  world  and  all  worlds,  including  all  phenomena, 
physical  and  spiritual,  in  all  detail,  are  but  the 
manifestation  of  the  invisible  and  personally  con- 
scious Intelligence,  working  out  his  plans  according 
to  his  own  methods.  The  great  object  revealed 
by  these  divine  manifestations  is  the  formation, 
development  and  destiny  of  man. 

Development  must  have  a  developer  and  a  law 
or  a  method  of  development.  The  machinery  of 
the  world  must  have  a  machinist  and  a  personal 
superintendent. 

The  plan  of  the  Deity  and  his  divine  processes 
are  written  in  distinct  chapters  and  in  hieroglyph 
on  the  face  and  in  the  secret  places  of  the  earth. 
Great  epochs  mark  the  history  of  the  earth,  and  its 


16  KEY  TO  THE  LAW  OF  EVOLUTION. 

wonderful  revolutions  are  but  the  divine  processes 
of  fitting  up  this  planet  for  the  abode  and  develop- 
ment of  man. 

The  order  of  the  divine  plan  as  written  in  the 
earth  is  : 

First,  Atoms  or  essences,  molecules,  particles  and 
substances  united  by  mathematical  law  and  held 
together  by  a  divine  force  called  chemical  affinity, 
in  the  plastic  forms  of  matter. 

Second,  Mathematical  points  about  which  matter 
centered  by  the  force  of  attraction. 

Third,  The  masses  thus  formed  are  put  in  motion 
according  to  mathematical  law,  and  they  assume 
mathematical  forms. 

Fourth,  These  masses  are  put  in  motion  and  kept 
in  motion  by  the  presence  and  power  of  the  Great 
Intelligence. 

Fifth,  As  the  earth  begins  to  cool,  vapors  are 
precipitated  and  are  condensed  into  water  and 
cover  the  face  of  the  earth. 

Sixth,  The  seas  are  joined  about  the  globe  to 
complete  the  equilibrium  about  the  centers  of 
motion,  and  the  dry  land  appears. 

Now  earth  is  but  a  dreary  solitude,  with  nothing 
to  disturb  the  awful  silence  but  the  wailing  winds 


KEY  TO  THE  LAW  OF  EVOL'UTION.  17 

and  mad  seas  dashing  themselves  to  pieces  against 
the  cold,  hard  rocks. 

The  antagonism  of  the  waves  set  at  liberty  that 
subtle  agent,  now  called  electricity. 

Seventh,  New  and  more  complex  combinations 
then  take  place.  Kocks  and  metals  are  formed, 
the  metals  crystallize  in  beautiful  forms  by  mathe- 
matical law,  the  prophecy  of  higher  forms. 

Eighth,  Another  form  of  Divine  force  is  intro- 
duced :  the  mysterious  life,  force,  and  the  prophecy 
in  the  metal  forms  is  fulfilled,  and  earth  is  clothed 
with  ferns  and  flowers. 

Ninth,  The  flower  in  its  organic  structure,  pro- 
duced by  matter  centering  about  this  new  point  of 
attraction,  the  life  centre,  now  becomes  a  higher 
grade  or  order  of  prophets  to  introduce  a  new 
order,  and  another  form  of  Divine  force. 

Tenth,  The  introduction  of  animal  life.  Above 
the  blooming,  fragrant  flower  wasting  its  beauty  on 
the  desert  air,  appears  the  beautiful  Psyche  flutter- 
ing and  humming  the  prophecy  of  bird  and  beast 
and  man.  But  earth  was  unfitted  for  the  abode  of 
higher  animal  life.  Monstrous,  gigantic  forms  of 
life  first  appear  suited  to  the  hot  and  horrible 
climate.  Trilobites,  ammonites,  frogs,  lizzards,  the 


18  KEY  TO  THE  LAW  OF  EVOLUTION. 

huge  and  hungry  ichthyosaurus,  mastodon  and 
megatherium,  that  have  been  preserved  in  their 
desolate  graves,  are  proofs  of  the  predecessors  of 
man. 

The  consumption  of  the  oxygen  of  the  air  by 
millions  of  air-breathing  animals  produced  an 
atmosphere  of  carbonic  acid  gas.  Seas  of  poison- 
ous atmosphere  enveloped  the  animal  world,  till  at 
last  the  equilibrium  was  restored  by  the  death  of 
millions  of  these  monsters.  The  fossil  forms  are 
found  in  the  secret  places  of  the  earth,  the  history 
of  the  age  engraven  in  the  rocks  forever.  Gigantic 
forests  then  covered  the  earth  on  a  scale  with  the 
extinct  animal  life,  and  consumed  the  seas  of  car- 
bonic acid  gas  and  converted  them  into  forms  of 
beauty  and  sources  of  wealth  for  the  coming  man. 

Long  ages  pass ;  ferns  grow  in  the  dark,  seques- 
tered nooks  and  shadows  of  the  trees  ;  flowers 
bloom  in  solitude  and  drink  in  the  sunlight  and 
transmute  it  into  shades  of  beauty  and  sweetest 
fragrance ;  busy  life  develops  into  higher  forms 
as  the  atmosphere  becomes  purified ;  the  old 
species  do  not  change,  but  more  perfect  varieties 
appear ;  still,  earth  is  not  ready  for  the  home  of 
man.  Great  revolutions  must  first  take  place,  and 


KEY  TO  THE  LA  W  OF  EVOLUTION.  19 

long,  long  ages  are  to  be  employed  in  this  great 
work. 

Continents  are  to  be  raised  from  the  bottom  of 
the  sea ;  oceans  are  to  exchange  places  with  the 
land  ;  mountain  systems  are  to  be  formed  ;  great 
valleys  carved  out ;  river  channels  cut,  so  that  the 
home  of  man  might  be  irrigated  and  the  future 
citizen  might  have  commerce  with  his  fellow. 
Hundreds  of  volcanoes  must  open  their  safety- 
valves  ;  revolutions,  through  the  agents  of  fire  and 
water,  must  uproot  the  forests  and  convert  them 
into  fields  of  coal,  wells  of  petroleum  and  fountains 
of  gas.  Earth  must  be  turned  upside  down  and 
inside  out  in  order  that  iron  mountains  might  be 
formed  and  the  precious  metals  deposited  in  the 
secret  veins  of  the  rock ;  that  salt  might  be  brought 
to  the  surface  and  minerals  be  within  the  reach  of 
man  ;  that  sandstone  and  limestone  might  be  found 
in  the  quarries  for  his  palace  and  marble  for  his 
tomb ;  and  that  an  atmosphere  might  be  formed 
in  which  the  future  cosmopolitan  might  live  and 
be  developed. 

When  all  was  ready,  and  ages  of  revolutions  had 
wrought  out  their  mission,  man  appeared  on  the 
stage  of  active  life,  not  as  a  development  of  some 


20  KEY  TO  THE  LAW  OF  EVOLUTION. 

higher  animal  forms,  but  the  top-stone  of  the 
temple  ;  the  highest  evolution  of  God ;  the  incar- 
nation of  spirit  and  soul  in  his  own  image.  God 
is  our  Father,  and  we  are  his  offspring  and  the 
crowning  work  of  his  hands. 

The  greatest  work  of  Deity,  that  for  which  the 
earth  itself  was  built,  was  the  creation,  develop- 
ment and  discipline,  and  the  perfection  and  final 
elimination  of  the  human  soul  from  gross  matter. 
There  is  no  process  in  mathematics  more  certain 
than  God's  method  of  transmuting  matter  and 
spiritualizing  it  for  the  purposes  of  spiritual 
intelligences. 

The  chief  object  in  giving  form  and  development 
to  earth  and  position  in  the  solar  system  was,  that 
through  the  divine  forces  of  solar  attraction  and 
the  attraction  of  gravitation,  life  would  be  possi- 
ble. By  the  great  chemical  laws  established  by 
the  Divine  Intelligence,  being  was  to  ascend 
through  a  long  series  from  the  lower  to  the  higher, 
until  the  climax  was  attained  in  man,  a  spiritual 
being  with  an  indwelling  soul.  This  essence  of 
the  spiritual  nature  outweighs  worlds,  in  value,  is 
more  important  than  all  the  planetary  systems  that 
fill  the  unexplored  space  of  the  universe ;  for  man, 


KEY  TO  THE  LAW  OF  EVOLUTION.  21 

the  perfected  man,  will  forever  retain  his  individu- 
ality and  personality,  and  will  become  a  companion 
and  co-laborer  with  Deity  himself. 

The  development  of  spiritual  intelligence  is  at 
the  expense  of  years  and  revolutions  in  gross  mat- 
ter. Earth  is  daily  growing  colder  and  constantly 
changing  as  man  advances  toward  greater  per- 
fection and  as  spiritual  intelligences  and  spiritual 
potentialities  increase. 

"It  is  impossible  not  to  believe  in- the  children  of  the  gods." 

—PLATO. 

The  fact  that  man  believes  in  a  higher  order  of 
intelligences  is  proof  of  man's  own  power.  The 
history  and  revolutions  of  the  earth  were  the 
prophecy  of  the  coming  man.  The  ideal  was  per- 
fection. He  must  be  more  than  a  trained  and 
developed  animal,  he  must  be  on  a  plain  with  the 
gods.  In  addition  to  instinct  and  appetite,  he 
must  have  reason,  imagination,  conscience  and 
will  power  ;  he  must  be  personal,  responsible  and 
immortal.  He  must  bear  the  image  of  his  Creator. 
He  must  be  able  to  command  the  forces  of  nature, 
rule  the  animal  kingdom,  convert  the  mineral 
kingdom  to  his  own  uses.  He  must  cut  down  the 
forests  and  quarry  the  rocks  from  the  mountain 


22  KEY  TO  THE  LAW  OF  EVOLUTION. 

and  convert  them  into  cities ;  melt  the  iron  mount- 
ains and  shape  them  into  instruments  of  husbandry 
and  roads  of  commerce ;  be  able  to  harness  the 
lightning,  bottle  up  the  steam  and  turn  the  world 
into  a  speaking  gallery.  He  must  be  able  to  create 
a  philosophy  and  to  answer  his  own  questions ; 
solve  the  problems  of  the  stars,  personal  existence 
and  human  responsibility.  He  must  have  a  spirit- 
ual nature  and  be  able  to  commune  with  God. 

Can  such  a  being  be  created  by  an  Almighty  fiat, 
or  must  he  be  developed  and  disciplined  by  the 
same  eternal  law  of  antagonistic  forces  ?  Is  not 
character  a  result  of  conflict,  the  product  of  action 
and  reaction  ?.  Does  not  matter  affect  mind  and 
mind  modify  matter,  and  by  this  great  law  of 
forces  produce  personal  history  ?  The  most  per- 
fect ideals  of  beauty  and  excellency  lie  in  the 
realm  of  developed,  disciplined  man,  and  moral 
and  physical  causes  are  blended  into  the  one  com- 
plex result,  character. 

The  philosophy  of  man  is  the  test  of  his  intel- 
lectual powers ;  the  proof  that  he  belongs  to  the 
children  of  the  gods. 


II. 


THE  GKEAT  LAW  OF  EVOLUTION. 

"  Ideas  go  booming  through  the  world  louder  than  cannon. 
Thoughts  are  mightier  than  armies.  Principles  have  achieved  more 
victories  than  horsemen  and  chariots.1'1 — PAXTON. 

"  Man  cannot  think  highly  enough  of  man.'1'1 — KANT. 

The  Athenians,  who  boasted  that  they  sprung 
from  the  earth,  wore  a  grasshopper  in  their  hair  ; 
in  these  later  days  the  grasshopper  has  evolved  into 
a  monkey,  and  some  men  are  still  proud  of  their 
ancestors.  From  the  lowest  vertebrate  to  man, 
from  the  savage  to  the  sage,  from  the  philosopher 
to  the  perfect  man,  are  great  gulfs  deep  and  wide, 
which  have  never  been  satisfactorily  bridged.  The 
most  difficult  are,  the  distance  between  the  mere 
animal  and  the  man,  and  between  the  savage  and 
the  perfect  ideal-man. 

One  class  of  thinkers  bridges  the  first  gulf  by  the 


24  THE  GREAT  LAW  OF  EVOLUTION. 

theories  of  correlation,  organization  and  spontane- 
ous generation.  Another  class  bridges  the  second 
gulf  by  education,  discipline  and  regeneration.  Is 
there  a  theory  that  will  include  all  ?  Is  there  a 
gulf  to  be  bridged  ?  Does  not  the  Divine  process 
revealed  in  the  history  of  the  earth  dispose  of  every 
difficulty  ?  Can  a  general  law  be  found  ? 

"  To  read  creation,  read  its  mighty  plans — 
The  plan  and  execution  to  collate." 

How  does  the  Deity  produce  results  ?  He  evolves 
himself  into  a  world  of  life  and  beauty  by  the  law 
of  antagonistic  forces.  Life  is  a  series  of  unfold- 
ings  through  death  ;  struggle  and  suffering  and 
voluntary  sacrifice  has  been  the  process  through 
the  ages ;  these  bridge  all  the  gulfs,  explain  all 
the  phenomena,  account  for  all  results.  Suffering, 
toil  and  sacrifice  account  for  all  development. 

Man  had  a  prophetic  period ;  the  revolutions 
through  the  long  ages  were  the  prelude,  the  an- 
nouncement of  his  coming.  When  he  arrived  and 
began  the  personal,  historic  period  he  found  no 
new  law.  Conflict,  toil,  sacrifice  is  but  a  new  edi- 
tion of  the  old  law  ;  each  link  in  the  series  rises 
out  of  the  grave  of  its  predecessor ;  matter  dis- 
solves, plants  live,  plants  perish  for  the  sake  of 


THE  OR  EAT  LAW  OF  EVOLUTION.  25 

animal  life ;  the  lower  orders  perish  for  the  sake 
of  the  higher  ;  man  sacrifices  life  for  self,  and  he 
in  turn  is  sacrificed  for  others. 

One  nation  perishes  at  the  hand  of  another,  but 
from  the  graves  of  the  dead  comes  a  higher  civili- 
zation. There  is  an  eternal  see-saw  among  antago- 
nistic forces,  but  there  is  coming  out  of  it  a  forward 
movement,  an  onward  progress  from  matter  to 
man,  from  man  to  God.  The  trituration  of  the 
mountain,  the  grass  on  the  hill-side,  the  bleating 
flock,  the  bustling,  busy  man  and  the  powerful 
nation  are  the  outcome  of  the  force  of  Deity  exerted 
through  the  antagonism  of  forces  in  nature. 

By  these  the  savage  may  be  developed  into  the 
citizen,  and  political  ideas  are  incarnated  in  consti- 
tutions and  institutions  and  civilizations.  Religious 
thought  expresses  itself  in  the  form  of  temple  and 
ceremony  and  systems  of  faith  ;  tombs  and  epitaphs 
mark  the  onward  progress.  Nature  is  one  constant, 
unmistakable  commentary  on  the  law  of  develop- 
ment by  conflicting  forces,  under  the  superin- 
tendence of  Deity. 

"  The  chain  of  being  is  complete  in  me, 
In  me  is  matter's  last  gradation  lost, 
An  the  next  step  is  Spirit — Deity!" 

There  have  been  five  or  six  epochs  and  revolu- 


26  THE  GREAT  LA  W  OF  E  VOL UTION. 

tions  in  the  elevations  and  depressions  of  the  earth  ; 
at  least  five  complete  organic  revolutions  among  the 
living  forms  of  the  animal  kingdoms,  and  more  than 
that  in  the  elevation  of  man  to  his  present  state  of 
civilization ;  but  the  onward  movement  of  the  ages 
is  under  the  same  law  and  under  the  same  Super- 
intendent. 

This  law  is  seen  in  the  oldest  rocks.  They  were 
formed  and  developed  by  two  conflicting  forces — 
chemical  affinities  and  forces  of  environment.  These 
produced  the  granite  and  porphyries  ;  syenite  and 
greenstone  and  all  the  basalts.  What  marvelous 
shades  !  What  infinite  variety  !  What  untold  beauty 
and  divine  taste  are  exhibited  by  the  Great  Chemist 
in  that  far  off,  heated  laboratory.  These  varieties 
of  rock  are  proofs  of  the  changes  in  climate  going 
on  in  the  first  ages  of  the  world,  of  the  presence 
of  the  Chemist,  combining  the  felspar  and  horn- 
blende into  beautiful  porphyries. 

He  compounded  the  metalloids  by  chemical 
affinities  and  in  due  time  heated  them  in  his  fur- 
nace and  deposited  them  in  the  crevices  of  the 
rocks  to  cool ;  others  he  left  in  the  form  of  oxides, 
carbonates  and  sulphurets,  in  order  to  develop  the 
genius  of  man. 


THE  GREAT  LA  W  OF  EVOLUTION.  27 

The  fossiliferous  rocks  are  the  homes  of  extinct 
species,  that  lived  in  the  hot  climate  in  the  early 
history  of  the  earth  ;  the  lowest  orders  of  vegeta- 
ble and  animal  life ;  these  were  balanced  one 
against  the  other ;  the  carbonic  acid  gas  manu- 
factured by  the  animal  was  consumed  by  the  vege- 
table world.  Had  there  been  no  conflicting  forces, 
this  condition  of  things  must  have  remained  un- 
broken forever,  and  all  progress  must  have  ceased 
at  this  point. 

The  Divine  again  interferes,  and  progress  is  on- 
ward. Earth's  climate  changed,  the  atmosphere 
became  cooler,  the  balance  is  destroyed ;  plants 
and  animals  perish  and  are  buried  in  the  rocks ; 
their  history  recorded,  and  another  chapter  is 
finished,  and  the  world  is  again  in  a  state  of  equi- 
librium. But  new  chemical  combinations  take 
place  and  gases  are  compounded,  and  heat  is  elimi- 
nated in  the  great  laboratory  ;  conflagration  breaks 
out,  and  the  earth  trembles  ;  the  rocks  are  melted 
and  lifted  up  by  chemical  forces  ;  all  things  are 
out  of  balance. 

The  earth  moves  on  for  ages,  but  the  planet  is 
getting  cooler  at  every  revolution  ;  the  long  cycles 
bring  changes ;  the  revolution  has  altered  the 


28  KEY  TO  THE  LAW  OF  EVOLUTION. 

world  and  buried  the  dead.  The  granite  peaks  cool 
off  and  remain  standing  monuments  of  the  -past. 
The  metallic  oxides  have  been  compounded  and 
preserved  in  the  lonely  cliffs  and  secret  places 
among  the  rocks.  Gold,  by  the  great  law  of 
attraction,  is  hid  away  in  veins  and  fissures,  that 
man  might  develop  his  energies  in  the  on-coming 
ages  of  commerce  and  higher  civilization. 

Thus,  age  after  age  have  these  antagonistic  forces 
been  at  work,  producing  revolution  upon  revo- 
lution ;  but  under  the  guiding  hand  of  the  Great 
Superintendent,  there  has  been  constant  progress. 
As  the  climate  of  the  earth  changed,  new  orders  of 
animals  and  plants  appear  adapted  to  their  environ- 
ment. Either  the  old  species  were  miraculously 
preserved  or  new  creations  took  place,  so  the  world 
moves  onward  without  a  break. 

Geological  changes  did  not  evolve  man,  but  made 
man  possible  by  fitting  the  earth  for  his  abode.  *  *  * 

THE    KEY. 

Has  not  all  life — vegetable,  animal  and  spiritual — a  common  origin  ? 
Are  there  not  three  distinct  grades  of  life,  not  flowing  out  of  each  other, 
but  in  three  distinct  channels  ?  Is  not  this  method  of  evolution  the 
universal  and  Divine  law  of  all  being  ?  Is  it  not  contained  in  the  uni- 
versal formula  of  the  prof oundest  man  of  the  race  ? 

"  In  Him  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being." 


THE  ADVENT  OF  MAN. 

"  Connection  exquisite  of  distant  loorlds  ! 
Distinguished  link  in  beings  endless  chain— 
Midway  from  nothing  to  The  Deity  !  " 

What  a  manifold  mystery  is  man  !  He  has  his 
origin  in  the  dust,  but  he  is  a  part  of  a  divine  plan 
that  reaches  to  the  heavens.  There  is  a  strong, 
intangible,  invisible  something  in  us  that  asks 
questions— What  ?  Whence?  Whither?  Where- 
fore ?  What  relation  has  organism  to  life  ?  life  to 
the  spiritual  nature  ?  What  is  soul  ?  The  fact  that 
man  can  ask  such  questions  is  proof  of  his  exalted 
nature.  If  he  can  ask  them  it  is  evident  that  he 
has  the  capabilities  of  answering  them  when  once 
developed. 

"  Who  reads  his  bosom  reads  immortal  life ; 
Or  nature  there  imposing  on  her  soul, 
Has  written  fables." 

We  have  traced  the  processes  in  nature  from  the 
dull  clod  up  through  the  tiny  plant  and  the  highest 
forms  of  animal  life  to  man.  A  being  in  whom  is 
found  the  stamp  of  Divinity — 

"  Spirit,  that  lurks  each  form  within, 
Beckons  to  Spirit  of  its  kin ; 
Self  kindled  every  atom  glens, 
And  hints  the  future  which  it  owes." 


30  THE  ADVENT  OF  MAN. 

A  personality  with  a  capacity  for  an  eternal  pro- 
gression toward  the  Deity ;  an  onward,  upward, 
sublime  movement  toward  the  perfect  and  infinite 
through  the  laws  of  truth  and  love.  Man  is  the 
highest  evolution  of  God — higher  than  matter 
forms,  higher  than  plant  or  animal  life  ;  a  distinct, 
independent  evolution ;  an  image  of  the  Deity 
himself. 

The  process  of  the  evolution  of  human  life  may 
be  traced  from  the  foetus  through  all  the  transmu- 
tations and  growth  to  birth,  and  from  birth,  through 
development  and  discipline  to  manhood  and  old  age. 

In  all  these  changes  the  same  law  of  antagonizing 
forces  is  present.  The  body  is  for  the  use  of  the 
spirit-nature.  The  nervous  system,  including  the 
spinal  cord  and  brain,  represents  the  inner  or 
spiritual  man ;  this  spiritual  man  is  elaborated  at 
the  expense  of  gross  matter. 

The  net- work  of  the  nervous  system  has  its  origin 
in  the  fine  nervous  tubes,  which  contain  delicate 
protine  threads  which  terminate  in  a  cell  forma- 
tion; the  very  sensitive  membrane  that  envelops 
the  nerve  fibre  becomes  the  inner  lining  of  the 
nerve  cell ;  this  cell  contains  protoplasm  which  is 
received  from  the  blood.  These  cells  are  both 


THE  ADVENT  OF  MAN.  81 

negative  and  positive,  and  there  is  generated  a 
current  in  definite  directions,  which  may  be  deter- 
mined by  the  galvanometer.  In  this  mysterious 
laboratory,  amid  the  most  ethereal  harmonious 
spirit-like  currents,  the  human  spirit  seems  to  have 
its  genesis  and  the  spiritual  man  to  be  secretly 
elaborated  by  the  Divine  Chemist ;  but  who  can 
trace  "the  way  of  the  Spirit"  ? 

"A  beam  ethereal,  sullied  and  absorbed! 
Though  sullied  and  dishonored,  still  divine ! " 

In  this  secret  chamber,  the  invisible  workshop 
of  God,  the  man  receives  not  only  the  stamp  of 
individuality,  but  that  which  lifts  man  above  all 
animal  life  and  allies  him  to  his  Maker,  personality. 
The  growth  of  the  spiritual  man  from  his  genesis 
to  birth  is  at  the  expense  of  gross  matter.  In  the 
laboratory  of  animal  chemistry  is  provided  nourish- 
ment for  this  immortal  mystery  until  he  comes 
forth  into  a  new  world,  helpless  and  dependent 
upon  others,  yet  endowed  with  power  to  transmit 
his  nature  to  posterity.  Here  he  begins  the  con- 
flict of  life,  for  he  grows,  is  developed  and  disci- 
plined and  perfected  by  the  same  law  of  antago- 
nizing forces,  though  on  a  higher  scale  and  in  a 
wider  field. 


MAN'S  HISTOEICAL  EVOLUTION. 

"  The  mind 

Forges  from  Knowledge  an  Archangel's  spear, 
And  with  the  spirits  that  compel  the  world, 
Conflicts  for  empire." 

Man  from  the  beginning  of  his  history  moved 
on  a  higher  plain  of  progression.  Plants  and  ani- 
mals were  limited  by  their  geography,  to  latitude, 
longitude  and  elevation.  Man  defies  all  climates, 
and  climbs  to  all  altitudes,  and  claims  the  world 
for  his  home.  He  developed  a  social  and  spiritual 
nature  and  usurped  authority  over  all  kingdoms, 
and  began  to  write  his  own  history.  He  gathered 
up  the  facts  of  the  past  and  appropriated  them  to 
his  own  use. 

Human  records  are  but  additional  and  more 
emphatic  proofs  of  the  Divine  method  of  man's 
evolution.  Personal  interest  or  social  affinities 
brought  men  together  in  groups.  Communities, 
tribes  and  nations  are  but  great  social  compounds 
bound  by  spiritual  attractions,  to  be  dissolved 
again  in  the  presence  of  stronger  affinities.  Here 


MAJT8  HISTORICAL  EVOLUTION.  33 

we  have  the  same  law,  only  in  a  higher  plain  of 
life,  that  is  found  in  chemical  forms. 

The  date  of  the  oldest  records  of  the  race  cannot 
now  be  satisfactorily  ascertained.  Whether  China, 
India  or  Africa  is  most  ancient.  If  Moses  has  not 
given  to  the  world  the  oldest  records,  all  acknowl- 
edge he  has  furnished  what  are  the  most  valuable 
to  the  race  and  the  most  reliable.  A  part  of  his 
writings  is  no  doubt  inspired,  while  much  that  he 
records  seems  to  be  facts  and  observations  of  his 
own,  and  information  obtained  from  others.  But 
whether  inspired  or  uninspired,  they  are  factors 
and  forces  in  the  evolution  of  human  history  and 
.in  the  higher  development  of  man. 

When  man  reached  the  proper  plain  of  intelli- 
gence he  was  divinely  impressed  through  his 
spiritual  faculties,  that  there  was  an  Intelligent 
Power  operating  through  matter,  by  which  the 
world  was  brought  into  being  and  carried  forward 
in  accordance  with  a  Divine  plan. 

This  personal  Power  and  Presence  was  called 
Jehovah.  Man  also  received  the  impression  that 
he  was  a  spiritual  being  and  possessed  of  immor- 
tality. 

The  first  great  event  in  the  evolution  of  man's 


34  MAN'S  HISTORICAL  EVOLUTION. 

history  was  the  religious  force  and  thought  power 
incarnated  in  altars  and  temples  of  worship;  in 
offerings  and  sacrifices  and  religious  ceremonies. 
These  offerings  were  not  mere  acts  of  worship,  but 
prophecies,  and  shadows  of  a  great  event  in  the 
evolution  of  man's  history.  Jehovah  selected  the 
best  specimens  of  the  race  to  be  workers  with  him 
in  the  development  and  discipline  of  all  the  peoples 
of  the  world.  Moses  and  the  prophets  were  chosen 
to  carry  out  the  plans  of  Jehovah  concerning  the 
history  and  destiny  of  mankind.  Through  them 
he  gave  to  man  the  moral  constitution  of  the  world, 
the  Decalogue,  which  is  suited  to  the  wants  of  men 
in  all  ages. 

The  best  example  of  national  evolution  is  found 
in  the  history  of  the  Hebrew  people  ;  there  is  more 
historical  detail  given,  and  more  marked  epochs  in 
their  development. 

The  race  to  be  disciplined  and  developed,  must 
be  set  in  families  and  organized  into  nations  and 
fenced  about  with  institutions. 

The  marriage  contract,  the  Sabbath,  and  religious 
ceremonies,  are  essential  to  the  highest  evolution 
of  any  people. 


THE  FACTOBS  THAT  MAKE  UP  A  NATION. 

"  Nations  are  God's  training  schools  for  the  development  of  man." 

-A.  J.  N. 
"  Mind  is  God's  first  end."— CHANNING. 

A  nation  is  not  a  multitude  or  a  mass,  held 
together  by  some  extraneous  forces.  A  country 
and  a  flag  is  more  than  a  crowd  with  a  ballot ;  as 
a  mob  is  not  a  city,  so  a  race  of  people  is  not  a 
nation.  A  nation  is  an  organized  people  with 
powers,  functions,  responsibilities  and  a  mission 
in  the  world. 

Nations  are  born,  grow,  live  and  die ;  the  indi- 
viduals are  bound  together  by  sacred  ties  and 
spiritual  affinities  ;  when  these  are  broken  disso- 
lution takes  place.  The  life  of  one  nation  is  sacri- 
ficed for  the  good  of  another,  as  soils  are  for  greater 
growths. 

The  secret  power  of  attraction  is  thought-force 
manifested  through  two  agents  ;  like  the  temple^ 
God  is  the  Architect  and  man  the  builder;  God 
furnishes  plans  and  specifications  and  superintends, 
while  man  constructs  and  works  out  the  plans. 


36  FACTORS  THAT  MAKE  UP  A  NATION. 

There  are  two  essential  thought-forces  that  hold 
nations  in  their  places ;  a  centripetal  and  centri- 
fugal force  such  as  bind  the  planets  into  systems — 

The  doctrine  of  God  as  a  personal,  Supreme 
Ruler. 

The  doctrine  of  political  equality  and  personal 
liberty  of  man. 

These  imply  sacred  days,  sacred  books,  sacred 
oaths  and  sacred  officers.  One  people  may  build  a 
Babel  or  a  Chinese  wall  or  a  pyramid.  Another  a 
temple,  a  Parthenon  or  a  Pacific  railroad.  Babylon, 
Egypt,  Persia,  Israel,  Greece,  Home  and  America 
are  all  developments  of  distinct  thoughts. 

A  complete  history  of  man  would  include  the 
entire  history  of  this  world  and  perhaps  of  all 
worlds. 

"  On  earth  there  is  nothing  great  but  man." 

The  development  of  man  through  national  train- 
ing is  a  part  of  the  Divine  plan  ;  without  social 
law  and  political  restraints  man  would  be  only  a 
savage  ;  a  being  of  appetites  and  passions,  full  of 
sensuality,  violence  and  crime,  and  tend  to  self- 
extermination.  This  was  his  early  history,  and  the 
Supreme  Ruler  followed  the  same  plan  with  man 
as  with  the  lower  animals.  In  the  fullness  of  time 


FACTORS  THAT  MAKE  UP  A  NATION.  37 

the  over-populated  earth  was  revolutionized  by 
the  law  of  antagonism,  and  a  new  chapter  in 
history  begun ;  only  a  few  of  the  best  stocks 
were  left  to  re- populate  the  earth  ;  but  from  the 
graves  of  their  fathers  was  to  come  another  gener- 
ation better  prepared  for  higher  development. 
The  new  race  was  set  in  families  ;  social  and  re- 
ligious restraints  were  imposed ;  the  history  of 
their  fathers  was  a  terrible  lesson ;  the  death 
penalty  was  enacted,  and  the  value  of  life  greatly 
emphasized. 

Population  was  soon  too  great  to  be  controlled 
by  families  alone,  and  the  tendency  to  centraliza- 
tion would  have  again  destroyed  the  race. 

The  law  of  antagonistic  forces  alone  could  pro- 
vide a  remedy  ;  decentralization  or  death  was  the 
alternative. 

THE  WORLD'S  GREAT  CONVENTION  DISPERSED. 
The  great  population  held  a  mass-meeting,  or 
national  convention,  at  Babel,  and  resolved  to  build 
a  race-monument  to  bind  the  multitudes  together. 
Jehovah  defeated  their  plans  and  put  them  on  the 
high  way  to  a  higher  civilization  by  confounding 
their  speech,  breaking  their  language  into  strange 
dialects,  and  by  the  great  law  of  decentralization 


38  FACTORS  THAT  MAKE  UP  A  NATION. 

which  still  sends  the  people  from  our  over- crowded 
cities  to  the  country,  they  were  dispersed  abroad, 
and  stimulated  by  new  homes  and  competition, 
they  were  preserved  from  the  fate  of  a  former 
history.  Years  elapse,  and  another  forward  move- 
ment was  necessary.  Jehovah  selected  from  the 
valley  of  the  Tigris  the  best  specimen  family  that 
the  centuries  had  produced. 

The  masses  had  become  hero-worshipers  and 
idolaters,  and  the  tendency  of  the  people  was 
downward.  God  chose  Abraham  and  his  family 
and  sent  them  to  the  best  climate  and  best  country 
then  on  the  face  of  the  earth  ;  for  two  hundred 
years  they  were  under  special  discipline ;  but  idola- 
try corrupted  them,  passion,  like  a  fountain  of  cor- 
ruption broke  forth,  the  strong,  animal  nature  of 
this  vigorous  family  must  be  crushed,  and  they 
must  again  be  separated  from  idolaters  and  put 
under  special  discipline. 

Isaac  was  a  quiet  specimen  of  ease  and  self- 
indulgence  ;  Jacob  was  a  cunning,  shrewd  man, 
but  needed  twenty  years  of  exile ;  Joseph  was  sold 
into  slavery ;  Keuben  and  Judah,  Bilhah  and  Tamar 
were  not  models  of  perfection.  These  Hebrews 
were  the  highest  attainments  in  manhood  the  race 


FACTORS  THAT  MAKE  UP  A  NATION.  39 

had  made,  and  they  were  sent  to  the  strongest,  best 
educated  nation  in  the  world,  to  be  disciplined  by 
the  same  law.  The  pendulum  now  swung  to  the 
other  extreme. 

They  were  made  slaves,  and  recklessness  was 
cured  by  hard  work.  A  common  sympathy  in  toil 
and  suffering  bound  them  together  in  one  brother- 
hood. The  constant  worship  of  idols  disgusted 
them  with  false  gods  and  drove  them  to  the  living 
God  for  help.  The  learning  of  the  Egyptians  was 
essential  to  a  preparation  for  their  future  life ; 
Moses,  their  great  leader,  must  be  educated  in  the 
college  of  the  Pharaohs. 

Schooled  in  Egypt  for  two  centuries,  the  Hebrews 
had  increased  to  two  millions.  Moses  was  born  at 
the  right  time  and  trained  in  the  science  of  govern- 
ment for  forty  years  ;  then  sent  to  the  mountains 
of  Arabia  to  make  a  survey  through  the  wilderness 
to  the  home  of  their  fathers.  He  was  commissioned 
at  the  burning  bush  in  the  deserts  of  Sinai,  the 
mightiest  man  of  all  the  old  centuries. 

The  nation,  the  first  great  nation,  was  now  ready 
to  be  evolved ;  it  had  a  history  and  a  leader,  and  a 
divine  Superintendent. 

Moses  marched  the  people  out  to  the  wilderness 


40  FACTORS  THAT  MAKE  UP  A  NATION. 

in  a  mass  ;  they  stood  in  front  of  Sinai,  heard  the 
voice  of  the  Almighty  and  saw  the  mountain  quake. 
The  people  accepted  Jehovah  as  King  and  received 
from  him  the  three  essentials  of  a  nation  :  the 
Law  to  instruct,  the  Temple  for  worship,  and  the 
Shechinah,  or  special,  divine  Providence  to  lead 
them  to  national  greatness  and  religious  develop- 
ment. 

The  nation  is  now  organized  and  worship  is 
established,  and  the  race  has  moved  up  in  the 
scale  of  a  higher  manhood,  yet  years  of  disci- 
pline were  needed  to  reach  the  best  types  of  the 
nation  ;  development  must  come  through  suffering. 

Moses  died,  but  the  nation  lived  on  through 
years  of  conflict  and  struggle. 

David,  the  most  perfectly  developed  type  among 
the  Hebrews,  came  to  the  throne ;  Solomon,  his 
son,  built  the  temple,  the  most  magnificent  monu- 
ment the  race  has  produced.  The  temple-  was  a 
divine  order  of  architecture  ;  ground  plan,  eleva- 
tion and  detailed  drawings  were  all  made  by  the 
Grand  Master  of  the  universe. 

The  workmen  were  inspired;  Bezaleel  and 
Aholiah  were  filled  with  wisdom  and  knowledge, 
to  work  in  gold  and  silver  and  brass. 


FACTORS  THAT  MAKE  UP  A  NATION.  41 

Moses  could  not  have  been  produced  by  any 
other  nation  or  at  any  other  time.  David  must 
come  from  the  sheep-cotes  of  Bethlehem  and  the 
temple  must  be  built  in  Jerusalem. 

THREE  GREAT  RACE  MONUMENTS. 

The  grandest  symbols  of  thought-forces  found 
in  the  history  of  the  race  are  the  Pyramids,  the 
Temple  and  the  Parthenon  ;  they  mark  the  differ- 
ent phases  of  national  evolutions,  by  the  great  law 
of  antagonistic  forces,  superintended  by  the  Divine 
Presence. 

The  Pyramids  are  grand  monuments  of  religious 
thought,  and  mark  the  highest  point  made  by  the 
nation.  It  was  not  the  ambition  of  great  kings  to 
preserve  their  names,  that  piled  up  those  massive 
forms  according  to  exact  science.  The  highest 
attainment  made  in  mathematical  and  astronomical 
science  are  recorded  in  that  stone  edition  of  civili- 
zation ;  there  is  the  history  t)f  religious  ideas  ; 
molecular,  soul  power  at  work  down  deep  in  the 
spiritual  nature  of  these  energetic,  superstitious 
Egyptians  ;  the  most  ancient  monument  of  science, 
sociology  and  religion. 

The  Parthenon,  the  gods  and  temples  and  altars 


42  FACTORS  THAT  MAKE  UP  A  NATION. 

of  Athens  were  but  physical  incarnations  of  the 
nation's  highest  thought ;  symbols  of  the  spiritual 
forces  at  work  in  the  heart  of  the  proud  Athenian. 
He  who  could  produce  the  most  impressive  picture 
of  the  incomprehensible  powers,  in  statue  or  song, 
was  immortal. 

The  Temple  surpassed  all  monuments  of  the 
race  in  both  magnificence  and  meaning. ,  It  was 
the  symbol  of  all  that  is  true  and  beautiful  and 
good.  It  was  built  for  the  visible  residence  of  the 
Invisible  Jehovah ;  a  physical  expression  of  his 
glory  and  a  symbol  of  the  still  greater  truth, — Man 
is  the  microcosm,  the  true  temple,  with  sanctuary 
and  inner  court.  The  great  object  to  be  accom- 
plished by  the  evolution  of  nations,  was  the  higher 
evolution  of  man  in  the  nations,  that  the  highest 
types  might  be  produced. 

The  symbolism  of  a  people  is  their  national 
biography.  Religious  ideas  have  been  the  intel- 
lectual and  moral  muscles  that  have  elevated  all 
peoples ;  all  progress  in  art  and  science  and  liter- 
ature is  traceable  to  religious  thought  force ;  hence 
the  best  types  of  every  nation  are  found  in  the  purest 
religionist.  The  Greek  culminated  in  Socrates,  the 
Roman  in  Cicero,  the  Arabian  in  Job,  and  the 


FACTORS  THAT  MAKE  UP  A  NATION.  43 

Hebrew  in  David  and  Paul.  These  are  the  marked 
men  of  the  old  past,  the  product  of  the  antago- 
nistic forces  of  their  age  under  the  Divine  Super- 
intendency. 

The  influences  that  operate  in  the  production  of 
a  nation  are  both  material  and  spiritual. 

That  which  built  the  temple  was  chiefly  spiritual; 
the  outgrowth  of  thought  and  religious  emotion. 

THE    PYRAMIDS    ARE    MAJESTIC    MONUMENTS    OF    RE- 
LIGIOUS THOUGHT. 

"Virtue  alone  outlives  the  pyramids, 
Her  monuments  shall  last  when  Egypt's  fall." 

The  Pyramids  are  monuments  of  religious 
thought ;  the  great  volumes  in  the  nation's  history 
and  the  key  to  the  national  character. 

The  force  of  religious  ideas  gave  birth  to  every 
motive,  quarried  every  stone  in  that  mighty  super 
structure.  It  is  Egyptian  mythology  that  solves 
the  problem  of  the  Pyramids. 

Osiris  was  the  god  of  the  dead,  the  supreme  god. 
He  had  himself  died  at  the  cruel  hand  of  Typhon. 
The  belief  that  Osiris  would  rise  again  from  the 
dead  and  destroy  his  enemy,  and  that  man  was 
immortal,  and  the  bodies  should  be  preserved 


44  FACTORS  THAT  MAKE  UP  A  NATION. 

till  the  resurrection  of  Osiris,  stimulated  them  to 
preserve  the  bodies  of  the  dead  by  embalming 
them,  and  is  the  solution  of  the  strange  fact  of 
Egyptian  mummies.  The  kings  and  great  men 
had  money  and  power.  Their  great  life-work  was 
to  build  a  tomb  that  would  stand  all  the  ravages  of 
time.  "Old  Cheops"  is  the  crowning  monument 
of  the  faith  of  Egypt  in  the  doctrine  of  the  im- 
mortality of  man.  It  is  the  great  depository  of 
their  knowledge  of  science  and  art,  architecture 
and  mechanical  skill,  mathematics  and  astronomy. 
Wrapt  up  in  this  sacred  volume  preserved  in  stone, 
we  have  the  history  and  philosophy  of  the  evolu- 
lution  of  the  nation. 

THE  INFLUENCE  OF  NATURE  IN  THE  EVOLUTION  OF 
A  PEOPLE. 

"Is  it  not  worth  while,  for  the  sake  of  the  history  of  men  and 
nations,  to  study  the  surface  of  the  globe  in  its  relations  to  the  in- 
habitants ?  "— GCETHE, 

Greece  was  the  great  intellectual  world-center, 
the  birth-place  of  art  and  oratory,  philosophy  and 
poetry ;  its  evolution  cannot  be  studied  without 
the  study  of  its  geography;  climate  and  scenery 
have  more  to  do  in  the  development  of  man 
than  has  yet  been  dreamed  of  by  the  profoundest 


FACTORS  THAT  MAKE  UP  A  NATION.  45 

thinkers.  Latitude  and  longitude  have  set  bounds 
to  the  development  of  the  race.  This  is  an  histori- 
cal fact  that  must  enter  in  to  the  problem  of  evolu- 
tion as  an  essential  factor.  As  the  Hebrews  were 
the  center  of  religious  force,  so  the  Athenians  were 
the  acme  of  intellectual  power.  The  Temple  could 
have  been  built  only  at  Jerusalem  on  the  hills  of 
Zion,  the  Parthenon  only  on  the  hills  of  Athens. 
The  great  national  centers  were  fixed  by  their 
geography ;  the  natural  scenery  of  Greece  is  with- 
out a  parallel. 

"Greek  scenery  presents  the  peculiar  charm  of  an  intimate  blend- 
ing of  sea  and  land,  of  shores  adorned  with  vegetation,  or  pictur- 
esquely girt  with  rocks  gleaming  in  the  light  of  aerial  tints,  and  an 
ocean  beautiful  in  the  play  of  the  ever-changing  brightness  of  its 
deep-toned  wave."— HUMBOLDT. 

Athens  was  the  outgrowth  of  her  geography ; 
the  most  favorable  locality  on  earth  for  the  highest 
evolution  of  human  genius.  The  long  centuries  of 
intense  energy  have  produced  no  duplicate  ;  in 
these  great  Grecian  Masters,  art,  eloquence,  phi- 
losophy and  poetry  crystalized ;  they  are  still  the 
classics  of  all  their  successors.  It  was  the  great 
commercial  center  and  afforded  "the  market-place  " 
for  the  active  minds  of  the  world.  Here  was  the 
great  arena  of  debate  ;  the  most  complete,  intel- 


46  FACTORS  THAT  MAKE  UP  A  NATION. 

lectual  gymnasium  of  the  race.  Here  were  dis- 
cussed the  mightiest  problems  of  the  human  mind  ; 
and  here  mind  made  its  most  extensive  surveys  of 
all  the  field  of  thought,  and  produced  the  most  per- 
fect ideals  of  beauty  and  the  finest  specimens  of 
literary  genius  yet  attained  by  the  race. 

Here  reason  attained  its  meridian  splendor ;  this 
incarnation  of  highest  thought  and  culture  remains 
as  model  for  all  time. 

The  songs  of  Homer,  the  statues  of  Phidias,  the 
dialogues  of  Plato,  are  immortal.  The  magnificent 
temples  and  statues  and  altars ;  the  Lyceum,  the 
Academy,  the  Garden,  the  Temple  of  Demeter,  the 
superb  home  of  Polytion — the  most  magnificent  of 
all  was  the  Temple  of  Minerva,  the  Parthenon,  the 
chief  pride  of  the  proud  Athenian.  These  are 
chapters  in  the  biography  of  the  nation.  What 
advance  from  the  "giants"  of  Genesis  to  the 
geniuses  of  Athens  ! 

What  is  the  law  of  their  evolution  ?  Why  the 
conflict  of  mind  with  mind  and  the  influence  of 
matter  on  mind  ?  They  are  the  result  of  antago- 
nistic forces. 

The  Greek  poets  could  have  been  produced  no 
place  else  but  in  Athens. 


FACTORS  THAT  MAKE  UP  A  NATION.  47 

The  majesty  of  her  mountains,  the  music  of  her 
seas,  the  genial  sunlight,  the  pure  breezes,  the 
snow-capped  mountains,  the  finely  wooded  hills, 
the  olive  and  palm,  the  matted  ivy,  the  golden 
crocus  and  blooming  asphodels,  were  divine  poems 
scattered  broadcast,  and  these  geniuses  had  only 
to  read  and  translate. 

Subtract  the  natural  scenery  from  Grecian  poetry 
and  the  beauty  and  inspiration  are  gone  ;  it  is  the 
woof  of  the  immortal  web  of  their  supernal  thought. 
Byron  never  could  have  written  his  finest  lines 
except  under  the  inspiration  of  her  splendid 
scenery.  Attic  air  was  a  better  stimulus  than 
English  brandy — 

"  Yet  are  thy  skies  as  blue,  thy  crags  as  wild ; 
Sweet  are  thy  groves  and  verdant  are  thy  fields, 
Thine  olives  ripe  as  when  Minerva  smiled, 
And  still  his  honeyed  wealth  Hymettus  yields." 

The  product  of  Grecian  genius  was  inspired 
thought-force.  They  were  not  geologists  studying 
rocks  and  fossils  and  revolutions  of  forgotten  ages, 
but  poets  translating  the  Divine  thoughts  in 
mountains,  seas,  birds  and  breezes.  They  were 
the  best  dreamers  of  the  world  struggling  for  the 
light ;  searching  for  God,  to  know  his  character 


48  FACTORS  THAT  MAKE  UP  A  NATION. 

and  the  powers  and  responsibilities  of  man.  They 
saw  the  invisible  powers  back  of  force  and  energy 
and  law ;  but  saw  through  a  glass  darkly.  They 
saw  back  of  all  phenomena  there  must  be  person- 
ality ;  and  they  filled  mountain  and  stream,  and 
forest  and  crag  with  dryad  and  naiad  and  oread ; 
living  beings  instead  of  the  abstract  forces  of  the 
laboratory ;  the  invisible,  spiritual  powers  were 
their  inspiration. 

Conflict  of  the  highest  thought  gave  birth  to 
both  the  nation's  institutions  and  the  national 
spirit.  The  gods  of  Athens,  the  temples  and  altars* 
her  statues  and  philosophy,  her  poetry  and  oratory, 
are  the  growths  around  a  common  center.  The 
statnes  of  Jupiter  and  Juno,  Neptune  and  Pluto, 
Minerva  and  Apollo,  were  but  the  highest  efforts 
of  human  genius  to  incarnate  the  invisible  in  forms 
of  beauty  and  power;  back  of  the  threatening 
storm-cloud  and  deep  muttering  thunder,  the  forked 
lightning  and  moaning  ocean  must  be  some  spirit- 
ual personality. 

Among  the  four  thousand  gods  of  Greece  there 
was  no  image  of  the  true  God.  Jehovah  was  not 
in  the  range  of  the  highest  imagination.  They 
built  a  plain  altar  and  placed  upon  it  a  public  con- 


FACTORS  THAT  MAKE  UP  A  NATION.  49 

fession  of  the  nation  in  the  simple  inscription, 
AGNOSTO  THEO— To  the  unknown  God.  This  marks 
the  highest  limit  of  the  nation's  evolution.  It  must 
have  more  light  or  perish  ;  but  it  rejected  the  light 
and  died,  and  all  posterity  feeds  out  of  its  richest 
accumulations. 

THE  COMPLEX  FORCES  IN  THE  FORMATION  OF  OTHER 
NATIONS. 

Modern  nations  are  no  exceptions  to  the  great 
law  of  antagonistic  forces. 

France  is  a  most  remarkable  nation.  The  out- 
growth of  religious,  political  and  social  forces  ;  a 
nation  full  of  dynasties  and  dynamite,  still  ready 
to  explode  at  any  moment.  It  has  produced  at 
least  two  of  the  most  powerful  men  :  Napoleon  and 
Victor  Hugo  ;  one  is  the  product  of  victories  and 
defeats  ;  the  other,  a  mountain  of  the  richest  ore, 
the  result  of  the  great  upheavals  of  society  and 
social  life. 

The  conflicts  of  his  times  developed  Napoleon, 
the  most  ambitious  and  mightiest  military  genius 
of  the  race.  He  was  the  greatest  force  of  its  kind 
ever  let  loose  on  earth ;  the  man  of  destiny,  dis- 
asters and  defeats. 

God   defeated   all   his   plans  at  the  battle  of 


50  FACTORS  THAT  MAKE  UP  A  NATION. 

Waterloo  by  sending  a  rain-storni  the  night  before 
the  battle  to  swamp  the  great  guns  of  the  world's 
greatest  artillerist,  in  order  that  Europe  might 
have  time  to  get  its  breath.  During  the  dreadful 
pause,  God  pushed  the  civilization  of  the  world 
forward  a  thousand  years.  Men  perish,  but  out  of 
their  tombs  come  other  forces  to  lift  their  fellows 
upward.  Man  may  say— 

' '  I  can  command  the  lightning  and  am  dust ! 
A  monarch  a  slave !  a  worm !  a  god  !  " 

The  evolution  of  Europe  is  the  result  of  the 
literature  of  England,  the  philosophic  thought- 
force  of  Germany,  the  gunpowder  of  France,  and 
the  Gospel  introduced  by  St.  Paul  and  superin- 
tended by  a  national  Providence  and  a  personal, 
Divine  Presence. 

The  great  central  thought  of  the  American  nation 
is  the  most  advanced  and  the  most  emphatic  ;  the 
doctrine  of  Liberty  is  both  center  and  circumfer- 
ence. 

The  rights  of  man  have  never  been  so  well 
formulated  or  pushed  to  the  front  by  any  other 
nation  in  history.  These  are  clearly  stated  in  our 
bill  of  rights,  incorporated  and  inwrought  in  our 
constitution  and  unfurled  to  the  breezes  in  our  flag. 


FACTORS  THAT  MAKE  UP  A  NATION.  51 

The  conflict  necessary  to  maintain  these  princi- 
ples against  antagonistic  forces  produced  our 
national  character ;  the  highest  type  that  has  yet 
appeared.  It  gave  birth  to  our  heroes  and  states- 
men and  constitutional  lawyers,  our  capitalists  and 
our  inventors ;  it  cut  down  our  forests,  built  our 
cities,  fenced  the  valleys,  tunneled  the  mountains, 
built  our  railroads,  and  filled  the  warehouses  of  the 
world  with  bread.  Liberty,  is  the  magic  word  that 
thrills  the  race  and  sends  the  people  by  thousands 
to  our  shores.  There  is  both  Divine  plan  and  pur- 
pose seen  in  the  law  of  immigration.  In  the 
western  world,  by  the  conflict  of  free  thought,  God 
intends  to  solve  the  problems  of  all  the  centuries  ; 
and  by  the  great  battle  of  ideas  to  eliminate  error 
and  lift  the  race  to  the  highest  civilization. 

"There  have  been  more  changes  in  thought  in  the  last  thirty  years, 
than  since  the  beginning  of  the  world."— PRESIDENT  HITCHCOCK. 

The  Anglo-Saxon  are  all  packing  up  for  the 
west ;  the  tide  was  never  so  great  as  now.  If  Rome 
shaped  the  politics  of  the  Old  World,  and  Greece 
her  literature  and  art ;  if  the  Jews  gave  to  the 
world  a  spiritual  momentum,  what  will  be  the  for- 
ward movement  of  the  race  when  all  these  forces 
are  combined  in  one  nation  ?  There  has  been  no 


52  FACTORS  THAT  MAKE  UP  A  NATION. 

history  so  marked,  none  has  made  such  rapid 
progress  in  population,  wealth  and  civilization  as 
America,  and  no  people  are  so  well  fed  and  happy 
as  Americans. 

"  America  may  reasonably  look  forward  to  the  time  when  it  will 
have  produced  a  civilization  grander  than  the  world  has  ever  known." 

— HEBBERT  SPENCEB. 

"  America  is  only  another  name  for  opportunity.  It  is  God's  final 
effort  in  behalf  of  the  human  race."— EMERSON. 

America  is  built  on  the  doctrine  of  a  personal 
God,  a  Divine  Superintendent  and  a  Supreme 
Judge,  and  the  doctrine  of  the  political  equality 
and  personal  liberty  of  man.  It  has  given  to  the 
world  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  free  speech 
and  a  free  ballot,  the  Emancipation  Proclamation 
and  the  Fifteenth  Amendment,  and  the  highest 
civilization  was  born  in  a  day. 

The  nations  of  the  past  attempted  to  build  their 
civilizations  on  caste,  on  culture  or  on  law,  but  all 
have  perished.  America  has  for  her  corner-stone 
personal  liberty,  the  rights  of  conscience  and  free- 
dom of  speech.  Ages  of  experience  have  taught 
man  that  the  best  method  of  developing  the  race, 
the  great  law  of  historical  evolution,  is  found  in 
the  revolutionary  power  of  ideas.  America  is  the 
highest  result  yet  reached  by  all  the  centuries. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  PEKSONAL  CHAE- 
ACTEK. 

"  Some  are  born  great,  some  achieve  greatness, 
Others  have  greatness  thrust  upon  them." 

—SHAKESPEARE. 

The  great  want  of  this  age,  both  in  church  and 
state,  is  the  study  of  great  men.  All  great  events 
center  around  a  few  great  men  at  the  centers  of 
influence  and  power  ;  hence  these  central  charac- 
ters become  the  greatest  phenomena  of  history  ; 
here  may  be  obtained  some  real  notion  of  the  won- 
derful capabilities  of  the  human  soul  and  its  lofty 
aspirations. 

The  present  century  has  given  more  study  to  the 
philosophy  of  human  history  than  all  the  preceding 
eighteen,  and  the  results  have  been  reduced  to  two 
theories  represented  by  Carlyle  and  Spencer.  First, 
great  men  mould  the  masses.  Second,  great  men 
are  the  product  of  the  masses — or  the  query  :  Are 
great  men  produced  by  revolutions  or  evolutions  ? 

No  solution  of  this  problem  is  possible  that  re- 
jects God  as  the  prime  factor  in  personal  history ; 


54  EVOLUTION  OF  PERSONAL  CHARACTER. 

God  puts  men  in  the  great  world-movements  in  his 
own  way  and  in  his  own  time. 

Abraham  and  Moses,  David  and  Paul,  Confucius 
and  Plato,  Homer  and  Shakespeare,  have  been  great 
centers  of  influence,  great  world-forces  in  the  evo- 
lution of  the  world's  history. 

As  the  quarry  is  greater  than  the  block,  and  the 
fountain  is  greater  than  the  stream,  so  man  is 
greater  than  all  his  works.  Abraham  is  more  to 
the  race  than  all  his  history  ;  the  choice  man  of 
his  age  was  put  in  training  under  the  personal 
direction  of  Jehovah.  He  was  separated  from  the 
heathen  and  left  their  gods  beyond  the  flood,  and 
followed  the  voice  of  the  living  Jehovah ;  he  crossed 
the  Jordan,  built  an  altar  and  held  communion 
with  God  ;  he  passed  through  great  trials,  high 
tests  of  loyalty,  and  surrendered  self.  Jehovah 
visited  him  at  his  tent,  and  promised  him  great 
things  in  the  future.  Abraham  believed  God, 
sacrificed  his  dearest  idol,  and  thus  the  father  of 
the  faithful  was  produced.  Moses  is  a  complex 
force  composed  of  great  personality,  the  influence 
of  his  mother,  the  culture  of  the  Egyptian  college, 
patriotic  devotion  to  his  slave-people,  forty  years 
training  in  the  desert  and  forty  years  of  the  per- 


EVOLUTION  OF  PERSONAL  CHARACTER.  55 

sonal  presence  of  Jehovah.  These  great  oppor- 
tunities added  to  his  own  genius  and  personal 
development  in  the  struggles  with  his  enemies 
and  the  perverseness  of  his  own  people,  produced 
Moses.  Out  of  these  conflicts,  aided  by  Divine 
influences,  came  the  great  Lawgiver,  the  mightiest 
man  of  the  Old  Testament  times. 

Plato  is  a  compound  of  the  sayings  of  Socrates, 
the  debates  of  the  "Marketplace"  and  the  influ- 
ences of  the  Academy  ;  he  is  the  sum  of  all  philoso- 
phy ;  the  wisdom  of  the  race  condensed  in  one 
man.  Every  thing  passed  through  his  mind  and 
was  colored  by  his  genius.  But  his  inspiration 
came  from  God  ;  he  depended  on  him.  "If  it  please 
the  God,  you  will  make  great  and  rapid  proficiency ; 
you  will  not,  if  he  does  not  please."  In  him  the 
Divine  and  human  meet  in  the  highest  intellectual 
plain.  "If  Jove  should  descend  to  earth,  he  would 
speak  in  the  style  of  Plato." 

Philosophy  is  a  revelation ;  Plato  is  the  Apoca- 
lyptic Angel,  the  personal  evolution  of  all  phi- 
losophy. 

But  philosophy  alone  cannot  shape  the  world 
correctly.  Eeligious  thought  is  the  great  force 
that  has  shaped  the  ages.  As  there  can  be  but 


56  EVOLUTION  OF  PERSONAL  CHARACTER. 

one  greatest  thought,  so  there  can  be  but  one  great- 
est man  ;  that  man  is  Jesus. 

Paul  and  the  colleges  of  the  apostles  and  the 
great  geniuses  of  the  race,  did  for  the  intellectual, 
social  and  spiritual  world  what  the  internal  fires  and 
physical  forces  have  done  for  the  material  world — 

Fitted  the  earth  for  the  highest  civilizations  and 
the  highest  conditions  of  human  development. 

But  there  is  something  greater  than  logical  argu- 
ment or  the  ability  to  organize  truth  into  a  system, 
something  greater  than  preaching  :  it  is  humility, 
se]f -sacrifice,  the  spiritual  power  of  a  personal  life- 

Jesus  is  greater  than  the  whole  college  of  the 
apostles,  greater  than  the  combined  genius  of  the 
race  ;  he  is  the  only  perfect  IDEAL-MAN. 

A  class  of  men  was  chosen  by  the  Master  for  the 
purpose  of  carrying  out  the  details  of  the  plan  of 
the  Father  for  the  highest  evolution  of  the  race- 
Each  of  the  twelve  was  a  factor  in  the  plan,  each 
performed  his  part  of  the  work  in  the  evolution 
of  truth.  Evangelism,  instruction,  organization, 
apocalyptic  vision  and  betrayal,  are  but  the  prime 
factors  of  the  Divine  plan. 

Who  can  determine  which  man  played  the  most 
important  part  ?  Which  was  the  greatest  moral 


EVOLUTION  OF  PERSONAL  CHARACTER.  57 

force  ?  Which  has  resulted  in  the  greatest  good, 
Pentecost,  or  Aceldama  ? — the  field  of  blood  ;  Peter 
or  Judas  ?  The  profession  of  Paul  the  martyr,  or 
the  confession  of  Judas  the  traitor  ? 

"They  are  but  parts  of  one  stupendous  whole." 

They  are  all  in  the  Divine  plan.  "  Jesus  knew 
from  the  beginning  who  it  was  that  should  betray 
him."  Hence  he  was  neither  disappointed  nor 
deceived.  What  would  have  become  of  the  king- 
dom had  Judas  not  been  chosen  an  apostle  ? 

The  voluntary  sufferings  of  the  apostles  and  the 
agony  of  Judas  the  transgressor  are  the  great 
spirit  forces  from  the  opposite  hemispheres  of  the 
soul  moving  on  together,  turning  the  tide  of  human 
sympathy  of  all  the  future  generations  toward  the 
Man  of  Sorrows. 

This  force  moving  forward  with  increasing  energy 
must  culminate  in  the  highest  evolution  of  the  indi- 
vidual and  the  race,  by  the  eternal  law  of  compen- 
sation. The  evolution  of  character  is  the  purpose 
of  all  the  Divine  plans  and  the  interpretation  of  all 
the  facts  of  history. 


58  EVOLUTION  OF  PERSONAL  CHARACTER. 

JESUS  IS  THE  HIGHEST  MANIFESTATION  OF  PERSONAL 
CHAEACTER. 

Jesus  of  Nazareth  is  the  most  exalted  and  most 
complete  character  that  has  ever  appeared  on  earth. 
He  is  the  Ideal-Man  that  has  revolutionized  the 
thought  of  the  ages,  changed  the  moral  atmosphere 
of  the  world  and  furnished  the  race  with  a  perfect 
model  for  human  living. 

He  is  the  Divine  clothed  with  and  dwelling  in  a 
fleshly  body.  He  was  so  conscious  of  the  indwelling 
of  the  Divine,  that  he  said,  "I  and  my  Father 
are  one."  He  is  the  highest  incarnation  of  God, 
and  a  necessity  for  man's  spiritual  nature,  as  the 
grandest  exhibition  of  love.  He  was  promised 
by  the  prophets,  and  came  in  the  fullness  of  time 
to  fulfill  Jehovah's  pledge,  sent  by  the  Father  to 
give  a  new  life  to  the  world  and  a  higher  class  of 
teachings  and  miracle  working  for  the  spiritual 
advancement  of  the  people,  and  to  convince  them 
of  the  truth.  While  Jesus  is  the  highest  type  of 
man  and  the  highest  incarnation  of  God,  he  is  not 
the  only  incarnation  of  the  Divine ;  wherever  the 
innocent  babe  is  found  and  the  pure  in  heart,  there 
God  dwells ;  there  the  Divine  is  incarnated.  What 
is  the  new  birth  taught  by  Jesus  but  an  incarnation 


E  VOL  UTION  OF  PERSONA  L  CHAR  A  CTER.  59 

of  the  Divine  ?  So  that  all  thought  and  all  purposes 
are  changed  for  good. 

God  dwells  in  his  prophets  and  ministers  of  all 
ages  ;  what  is  prophesying  and  preaching*  but  God 
speaking  through  men  ?  This  is  God's  method  of 
giving  expression  and  exposition  to  his  own  revela- 
tion ;  so  that  every  one  conscious  of  the  Divine 
truth  and  love  in  the  heart  can  say,  I  and  my  FatEer 
are  one. 

The  same  Divine  Spirit  that  filled  to  overflowing 
and  illuminated  the  great  soul  of  Jesus  and  made 
him  the  willing  sacrifice  for  the  good  of  others, 
fills  man's  spirit ;  it  supported  the  martyrs  in  their 
unfaltering  tread  to  the  stake.  The  teachings  of 
Jesus  are  the  thoughts  of  Jehovah  and  ought  to  be 
accepted  by  all  because  they  are  the  very  best  the 
race  has. 

His  Spirit  is  the  sublimes t  exhibition  of  purity 
and  love.  He  was  led  by  the  Divine  Spirit  to 
be  tested  in  the  wilderness,  and  voluntarily  sur- 
rendered himself  to  die  on  the  cross  ;  he  could  not 
refuse  the  Father,  and  was  sustained  by  him  ;  he 
accepted  the  work  his  Father  gave  him  to  do,  and 
sealed  it  with  his  blood. 

Whether  Christ  died  to  redeem  fallen  man  or  for 


60  EVOLUTION  OF  PERSONAL  CHARACTER. 

a  principle  or  doctrine  that  if  obeyed  would  save 
man,  matters  not,  so  far  as  our  responsibilities  go. 
Christ  could  not  have  done  more  than  he  did  to 
save  ten  thousand  worlds. 

God  gave  the  Messiah  to  the  world,  and  Christ 
is  the  Saviour  of  all  who  accept  his  doctrines  and 
live  them. 

Jesus  is  the  universal  mind,  the  highest  expres- 
sion of  humanity ;  there  is  no  teacher  like  him  ; 
in  the  range  of  his  thought  he  surveyed  both 
worlds ;  in  his  method  he  is  alone ;  he  never 
learned  letters,  belonged  to  no  school  of  philoso- 
phy, no  sect  in  religion ;  he  compassed  all  the 
race.  While  a  Jew  by  birth  and  early  influence 
he  was  broader  than  Moses  or  Abraham,  broader 
than  Brahmanism  and  all  the  old  religions  of  the 
world. 

Confucius  was  a  great  teacher,  but  he  was  only  a 
Chinaman ;  Chinese  in  thought  and  expression, 
and  limited  by  the  boundaries  of  his  own  people. 
Plato  was  a  great  teacher,  but  he  was  a  Greek  ;  he 
was  limited  to  speculative  science  ;  his  method 
was  dialectic,  his  spirit  was  Greek ;  he  organized 
no  schools,  built  no  temples,  left  no  systematized 
thought,  has  no  disciples. 


EVOLUTION  OF  PERSONAL  CHARACTER.  61 

Paul,  the  highest  development  yet  made  by  the 
race,  was  only  the  great  disciple  and  expounder  of 
his  Master  ;  he  never  added  a  line  to  the  teachings 
of  Jesus.  Paul  has  no  school  and  no  disciples. 
Jesus  is  the  Universal,  Ideal,  Perfect  Man ;  the 
mightiest  of  all  the  ages  and  the  model  for  all 
men ;  not  a  man,  nor  the  man — but  Man.  "  An 
Israelite,  indeed,  in  whom  there  is  no  guile." 

Sublimity  of  character,  immaculate  life  and 
spiritual  power  are  the  Divine  forces  incarnated 
in  Jesus,  which  will  conquer  all  antagonistic  forces 
and  draw  all  men  unto  him. 

"  Jesus  has  no  visions;  God  does  not  speak  to 
him  from  without.  God  is  in  him  ;  he  feels  that 
he  is  with  God,  and  he  draws  from  his  heart  what 
he  says  of  his  Father.  He  lives  in  the  bosom  of 
God  by  uninterrupted  communication  ;  he  does  not 
see  him,  but  he  understands  him  without  need  of 
thunder  and  burning  bush  like  Moses,  of  a  reveal- 
ing tempest  like  Job,  of  an  oracle  like  the  old 
Greek  sages,  of  a  familiar  genius  like  Socrates. 

"  Complete  conqueror  of  death,  take  possession  of 
thy  kingdom  ;  whither  shall  follow  thee,  by  the  royal 
road  which  thou  hast  traced,  AGES  OF  WORSHIPERS  ! ! " 

— Kenan . 


EVOLUTION  THKOUGH  SUFFEEING. 

Disease,  decrepitude,  disappointment  and  death 
are  great  facts  full  of  mystery.  Who  shall  furnish 
a  key  to  this  sad  secret  ? 

Epicureans  have  taught  for  ages  that  the  good 
overbalances  the  evil  and  that  this  is  the  best 
possible  in  a  world  of  matter. 

Idealists  have  said  that  poverty,  misfortune, 
affliction,  strikes  and  bread  riots  are  only  the  poetry 
of  life ;  but  suffering  for  the  right,  or  moral  sacri- 
fice, is  the  philosophy  of  moral  development,  a 
method  of  the  evolution  of  character  and  the  high- 
est moral  force  in  the  universe. 

To  get  the  flour  out  of  the  wheat,  it  must  be 
ground  between  the  upper  and  nether  millstones 
and  be  bolted  ;  to  get  the  gold  out  of  the  quartz,  it 
must  be  crushed  before  the  gold  can  be  separated  ; 
so  the  highest  qualities  of  manhood  are  often 
developed  through  suffering. 

The  crust  of  the  globe  is  mostly  made  of  animal 
remains.  Our  richest  soils  which  produce  the 


EVOLUTION  THROUGH  SUFFERING.  63 

golden  grain,  the  most  luscious  fruits  and  fragrant 
flowers,  are  but  the  dust  of  the  graves  of  dead 
generations ;  our  limestone  ledges  and  sandstone 
hills,  and  our  beautiful  oxides  which  are  decom- 
posed by  the  storms  and  triturated  by  the  years 
into  the  most  productive  soils,  are  only  the  sacri- 
fices of  the  by-gone  ages  transmuted  into  valleys 
of  wealth  for  the  personal  benefit  and  higher 
development  of  the  race. 

These  apparent  contradictions  are  not  accidents ; 
God  makes  no  mistakes ;  they  are  parts  of  a  divine 
plan  for  the  complete  development  and  highest 
perfection  of  man. 

Earth  is  full  of  calamities,  accidents  and  catastro- 
phes on  every  page  of  its  history.  Earthquakes 
swallow  up  whole  cities,  and  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  lives  and  millions  of  money  are  destroyed.  Hun- 
dreds of  frightful  volcanoes  vomit  forth  destruction 
and  floods  of  fire  overwhelm  the  horror-stricken 
inhabitants ;  the  desolating  tornado  and  terrific 
cyclone,  physical  monsters  without  mercy,  rush  in 
wild  fury,  powerful  and  pitiless  in  their  work  of 
death.  Is  there  a  defect  in  the  planetary  system  ? 
Have  the  physical  laws  broke  loose  from  the  Great 
Superintendent  ?  No  !  Emphatically  no  ! 


64  EVOLUTION  THROUGH  SUFFERING. 

Drouth  and  famine  stalk  abroad  with  haughty 
step  like  fiends,  lawless  and  invulnerable,  and 
whole  countries  are  reduced  to  starvation.  Epi- 
demics, with  silent  tread  steal  into  the  homes  of 
poverty  and  wealth,  and  neither  science  nor  sacri- 
fice are  able  to  explain  or  defeat  the  terrible 
scourge.  Is  the  Superintending  Power  unable  to 
control  his  own  work,  or  is  man  ignorant  and  un- 
able to  explain  ? 

There  are  freaks  in  nature  in  the  forms  of 
the  vegetable  and  animal  world  that  seem  to  be 
difficult  to  explain — strange  defects,  mysterious 
malformations,  unaccountable  deformities.  Dwarfs 
among  the  grasses,  poison  among  the  most  beauti- 
ful flowers,  rot  seizes  a  whole  crop  of  potatoes  on 
which  helpless  children  depend  for  bread,  rust 
attacks  the  wheat  and  the  price  rises  above  the 
pockets  of  the  poor,  and  thousands  go  hungry 
while  the  warehouses  of  the  world  are  full.  The 
cattle  die  from  diseases  and  bleating  flocks  perish 
from  drouth.  One  half  of  mankind  die  in  infancy 
and  a  large  proportion  are  born  blind  and  deaf  and 
deformed.  As  the  trees  in  the  mighty  forests  are 
crooked  and  gnarly  and  twisted  and  defective  at 
the  center,  so  men  are  diseased  and  deformed,  both 


EVOLUTION  THROUGH  SUFFERING.  C5 

in  body  and  in  mind  ;  some  idiotic  and  not  able  to 
take  care  of  themselves,  and  but  few  come  up  to 
any  correct  standard  of  physical  perfection. 

There  are  also  some  examples  of  the  wonderful 
intellectual  capabilities  of  man.  His  wonderful 
achievements  in  the  arts  and  sciences,  in  bringing 
the  elements  into  subjection  and  using  them  for  his 
own  purposes.  He  can  weigh  the  planets,  estimate 
their  distances  and  calculate  to  a  second  their 
wonderful  revolutions ;  but  what  a  large  propor- 
tion are  low  in  the  intellectual  scale,  with  but  little 
capacity  for  education,  and  how  few  come  up  to 
any  reasonable  standard  of  perfection  ?  Are  they 
failures  ?  Then,  who  is  to  blame  ?  Is  there  any- 
body to  blame  ? 

Had  man  the  key  to  this  mystery,  would  not  all 
be  plain  ?  But  defect  and  error  and  discrepancy 
are  found  in  every  thing  about  us  ;  it  abounds  in 
man's  moral  nature. 

Man  has  capability  to  hold  communion  with  God ; 
how  beautiful  and  complete  he  is  in  moral  excel- 
lence and  grandeur,  as  seen  in  his  works  of  love 
and  charity  and  deeds  of  self-denial.  But  how  few 
indeed  have  a  well  developed  moral  character.  The 
masses  are  immoral,  deceitful,  revengeful  and 


66  EVOLUTION  THROUGH  SUFFERING. 

treacherous;  how  many  are  dishonest,  selfish, 
licentious  and  criminal  ? 

God  looked  down  from  heaven  and  saw  that 
there  was  none  good,  none  that  came  up  to  the 
Divine  standard.  What  a  verdict  for  the  Creator 
to  pronounce  upon  his  own  children  !  Are  men 
failures?  Has  God  made  a  mistake  in  bringing 
man  into  being  ? 

Why  this  imperfection  in  all  things  about  us  ? 
There  is  nothing  that  seems  complete.  Even  the 
revelation  that  God  gave  to  man  seems  full  of  im- 
perfections. Why  a  hundred  different  creeds,  all 
purporting  to  be  based  upon  the  same  revelation  ? 
And  what  has  been  more  violent  than  the  collision 
of  creeds  ? 

One  claims  infallibility,  claims  that  Christ  dele- 
gated all  power  to  St.  Peter  and  his  legal  suc- 
cessors, and  hence  there  is  no  salvation  outside  the 
confessional  and  priestly  absolution.  Another 
limits  salvation  to  a  class  called  the  elect,  fore- 
ordained before  they  were  born  ;  and  still  another 
sets  no  limits  and  claims  from  the  same  revelation 
universal  salvation  of  all  men. 

Then,  there  seem  to  be  contradictions  in  the 
statements  made  in  the  Bible.  David  is  declared 


EVOLUTION  THROUGH  SUFFERING.  67 

to  be  a  man  after  God's  own  heart,  yet  he  mur- 
dered a  man  by  putting  him  in  the  front  of  the 
battle,  that  he  might  get  his  wife.  Abraham  had 
his  Hagar,  an  Egyptian  concubine,  and  Jacob  was 
a  polygamist.  Why  this  conflict  of  life  and  law  ? 
Why  are  such  examples,  with  a  hundred  others, 
spread  upon  the  divine  record  ?  Choice  men  have 
their  faults,  and  this  world  is  one  of  apparent 
defects  and  deficiencies  in  every  department. 

Both  matter  and  spirit  are  imperfect  in  their 
present  condition ;  crystals  are  defective,  the  vege- 
table world  dwarfed  ;  animals  deformed  and  men 
depraved ;  nations  are  at  war,  and  states  are  in 
commotion  politically  and  socially ;  there  is  a 
general  ebb  and  flow  in  society,  like  the  tides  in 
the  ocean  ;  now  a  community  is  lashed  into  foam, 
then  the  breakers  become  quiet  and  the  waves 
return,  but  to  repeat  themselves  again  in  foaming 
white  caps.  Our  social  and  political  problems  are 
the  most  important  that  ever  agitated  or  convulsed 
a  nation. 

The  race  problem  is  not  yet  settled  ;  it  is  liable 
to  throw  the  nation  into  spasms  at  any  moment. 
We  have  overworked  the  doctrine,  that  all  men  are 
born  free  and  equal ;  the  fact  is,  there  is  no  such 


68  -E  VOL  UTION  THRO  UGH  SUFFERING. 

thing  as  equality  among  men.  There  are  certain 
fixed  laws  in  social  life,  as  fixed  and  immutable  as 
in  mathematics  or  mechanics ;  these  must  not  be 
violated.  There  can  never  be  peace  in  society  till 
some  platform  is  discovered  broad  enough  to  com- 
prehend and  provide  for  all  the  wants  of  every 
individual ;  any  effort  to  solve  the  problem  upon 
the  hypothesis  that  all  men  are  equal  factors  in  the 
intellectual  and  social  unit,  will  ever  be  fruitless 
because  it  is  false. 

Nature  has  a  kind  of  aristocracy  in  the  intel- 
lectual and  social  world  ;  a  few  men  have  always 
done  the  thinking  and  planning  for  the  many.  But 
the  many  have  political  rights  which  must  be  kept 
inviolate ;  life,  liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  happi- 
ness belong  to  man  by  virtue  of  his  manhood ; 
neither  ignorance,  poverty  nor  color  can  rob  man 
of  rights  which  are  inalienable ;  yet  such  is  the 
condition  of  society,  that  conflict  will  go  on,  but 
the  result  will  be  the  constant  uplifting  of  the 
masses. 

The  tendency  to  centralization  in  wealth  keeps 
up  a  constant  conflict  with  the  masses  of  the 
people.  In  a  government  like  ours  this  conflict  is 
to  be  dreaded  by  the  nation  ;  for  where  the  great 


EVOLUTION  THROUGH  SUFFERING.  69 

political  parties  are  so  nearly  balanced  the  parties 
may  be  corrupted  by  the  money  power  and  the 
state  suffer  great  loss  ;  already  the  shadows  are  on 
the  wall,  and  coming  events  are  near  at  hand. 

Labor  must  be  better  protected,  monopolies 
must  be  better  guarded,  and  personal  aggrandize- 
ment at  the  expense  of  honest  toil  must  be  cor- 
rected, or  all  hope  of  adjudication  may  as  well  be 
abandoned.  The  men  who  work  must  receive  their 
share  of  the  profits  of  their  own  skill  and  labor ; 
their  rights  must  be  made  secure  or  the  seeds  of 
revolution  will  grow,  and  strikes  and  mobs  and 
lawless  outbreaks  will  continue,  till  capital  will  be 
compelled  to  surrender  for  its  own  protection. 

Public  opinion  is  a  bodiless  spirit  and  cannot  be 
controlled ;  it  becomes  incarnate  in  the  crowd  and 
walks  the  street  with  fearful  tread,  armed  with  club 
and  faggot,  and  in  moments  of  excitement  often 
reduces  years  of  toil  to  smouldering  ash  heaps. 

The  remedy  for  this  dread  evil  will  not  be  found 
in  the  dreams  of  socialists  or  the  inflammatory 
harangues  of  demagogues. 

The  real  point  of  adjustment  is  the  division  of 
profits.  The  state  needs  a  fixed  standard  by  which 
to  divide  the  profits  between  labor  and  capital  by 


70  E VOL UTION  THROUGH  S UFFERING. 

the  law  of  equivalency ;  this  is  the  pith  of  the 
problem.  There  is  a  master  mind  needed  in  the 
field  of  political  economy  ;  the  man  who  will  show 
the  world  some  universal  principle  by  which  to 
determine  the  ratio  of  capital  to  labor,  will  be  the 
peer  of  any  of  the  world's  great  benefactors  and 
be  able  to  put  to  rest  this  dangerous  question. 

We  have  conflicts  of  religious  opinions  that  lie 
deeper  below  the  surface,  but  as  real  as  the  first 
rumbling  of  the  earthquake  or  the  trembling  of  the 
volcano.  The  time  is  approaching  when  the  Ameri- 
can people  at  least  will  protest,  against  any  foreign 
power  dictating  in  the  affairs  of  our  nation. 

But  a  greater  conflict  stares  us  in  the  face  ;  it  is 
the  legalized  liquor  traffic.  The  thought  is  humili- 
ating, that  a  great  government  like  ours,  complain- 
ing of  a  surplus  in  her  treasury  ;  a  government  that 
has  made  such  costly  sacrifices  to  maintain  the  prin- 
ciples of  liberty,  should  be  a  party  to  the  collection 
of  revenue  from  the  nefarious  liquor  traffic. 

A  nation  that  has  spent  a  billion  of  dollars  and 
has  sacrificed  a  million  of  her  citizens  in  the 
defense  of  liberty,  has  consented  to  furnish  the 
shackels  and  the  authority  of  law  to  bind  her  own 
people  in  a  worse  bondage  than  bodily  servitude  ; 


EVOLUTION  THROUGH  SUFFERING.  71 

a  bondage  which  means  separation  of  husband  and 
wife,  parents  and  children,  and  confiscation  of 
property  without  any  prospect  of  compensation. 

For  a  government  to  legalize  such  a  traffic,  is  to 
surrender  its  most  sacred  powers  committed  to  it  by 
its  own  people,  to  poison  its  own  ballot-box,  to  cor- 
rupt the  fountain  of  good  citizenship,  and  to  usurp 
the  authority  delegated  to  it  by  its  own  citizens. 

A  traffic,  worse  than  the  slave  trade,  filling 
asylums  and  prison  cells ;  ruling  society  with  all 
the  terror  of  a  despot ;  outstripping  the  savage  in 
his  most  fiendish  acts  of  barbarism  ;  sapping  the 
vitality  of  the  nation,  and  if  not  checked  it  will 
shake  the  very  foundation  of  the  mightiest  republic. 
It  is  opposed  to  liberty  of  thought,  to  culture  and 
refinement,  and  to  all  moral  and  religious  develop- 
ment ;  its  influence  extends  from  one  extremity  of 
the  nation  to  the  other,  a  withering  curse,  blighting 
the  hopes  of  the  future. 

To  save  our  flag  and  keep  it  floating  among  the 
nations  ;  to  save  our  sons  and  daughters  from  dis- 
grace and  ruin,  the  appeal  must  be  to  legal,  consti- 
tutional prohibition,  to  Congress,  to  state  legis- 
latures, to  every  party  and  church  creed,  and  more 
than  all  and  above  all,  to  the  God  of  nations. 


72  EVOLUTION  THROUGH  SUFFERING. 

Cato  desired  that  he  might  die  when  he  antici- 
pated the  death  of  Borne  ;  the  wisest  and  best 
men  are  alarmed  at  the  social  monsters  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  This  whiskey  monster  is  not  a 
dream,  not  a  prophecy,  but  a  fact,  a  real  monster ; 
not  an  apocalyptic  vision,  but  a  live,  enormous, 
modern  megatherium,  with  appetite  enough  to 
swallow  the  nation  and  destroy  the  race. 

Constitutional  prohibition  must  march  to  the 
field  of  conflict ;  this  divine  law  of  antagonism  is 
the  only  remedy ;  the  nation's  safety  demands  it, 
and  the  people  will  sustain  it ;  the  old  flag  must 
be  preserved,  and  the  sons  and  daughters  of  the 
nation  must  be  protected  from  this  prince  among 
the  destroyers. 

SUFFERING — PERSONAL    SACRIFICE    IS    A    METHOD    OF 
THE  HIGHEST  DEVELOPMENT. 

Personal  suffering  has  ever  been  the  great 
problem  of  the  sages,  and  philosophy  has  failed  to 
solve  it.  Is  there  a  key  ?  Among  some  of  the 
highest  order  of  genius  it  is  still  an  open  question. 

Goethe,  in  his  "Faust,"  gives  it  up,  sells  out  life 
to  the  fiends,  lives  in  sense,  and  emigrates  to 
Pandemonium. 

Shelley,  in  his  immortal  "Prometheus,"  sends 


EVOLUTION  THROUGH  SUFFERING.  73 

Misery  to  the  market  to  buy  bread.  "  Festus,"  the 
most  marvelous  among  the  recent  poems,  gives  all 
meii  a  second  chance  in  another  world.  Job,  the 
broadest  and  most  philosophic  of  all  the  poets  of  the 
race,  makes  compensation,  or  the  law  of  equiva- 
lence, the  solution  of  the  problem  of  suffering. 

That  suffering  is  one  of  the  Divine  methods  of 
evolution,  and  that  the  law  of  equivalence  is  a 
Divine  law,  seem  to  be  true,  and  may  solve  the 
moral  side  of  the  problem ;  but  the  present  en- 
vironment is  an  essential  factor  and  must  be 
included  in  order  to  meet  the  whole  question. 

The  death  of  animals  can  have  nothing  to  do  with 
"Prometheus"  or  Pandemonium;  animals  lived 
and  died  for  the  benefit  of  man  ;  and  the  compen- 
sation, by  the  law  of  equivalence,  is  seen  in  the 
rich  soils  that  are  formed  out  of  their  remains,  to 
be  transmuted  into  bread  for  civilized  man.  The 
poisons  concentrated  by  chemical  forces  to  form 
tho  brilliant  colors  of  the  beautiful  flowers  that 
bloom  and  perish  in  a  day,  are  not  wasted,  but 
recompounded  by  the  tireless  butterfly  and  happy 
humming-bird  into  matchless  motions  and  extatic 
delights.  Earthquake,  volcano,  tornado  and  cyclone 
are  but  safety-valves  to  prevent  the  earth  from 


7  i  E  VOL  UTION  THRO  UGH  SUFFERING. 

rending  in  pieces  and  becoming  uninhabitable  ;  a 
Divine  method  of  restoring  the  equilibrium  in  the 
imperfect  condition  of  the  globe. 

Famine,  born  of  drouth  is  but  the  prophecy  of 
plenty  that  will  come  in  due  time  by  the  law  of 
equivalence. 

Epidemics,  when  understood  are  but  lessons  in 
the  laws  of  health  that  will  result  in  greater  happi- 
ness ;  the  very  best  that  is  possible  in  the  present 
condition  of  things. 

Freaks  in  nature  and  in  human  nature  may  still 
lie  outside  our  knowledge  of  physical  and  spiritual 
laws,  but  they  also  are  under  the  general  law  of 
equivalence. 

The  gnarly  oak,  the  deformed  horse  and  the 
idiotie  child  now  lead  to  the  more  astute  study  and 
extensive  exploration  of  the  laws  of  matter  and 
life,  and  the  results  are  evidences  of  compensation. 
Moral  laws  are  more  complicated  than  physical  or 
intellectual,  for  the  spiritual  universe  is  not  within 
the  range  of  scalpel,  or  microscope,  or  laboratory ; 
and  revelation,  from  which  man  may  expect  per- 
fection, seems  to  be  full  of  imperfections  and  is  no 
exception  to  other  phenomena  ;  but  the  law  of 
equivalence  is  found  in  the  facts  revealed,  that  the 


EVOLUTION  THROUGH  SUFFERING.  75 

most  exalted  characters  of  history  have  been  im- 
perfect, so  that  man  must  look  beyond  for  the 
perfect  Ideal-Man. 

Creeds  are  the  outgrowth  of  imperfect  character, 
but  their  antagonistic  force  has  lifted  the  race 
higher  at  every  movement.  Modern  Europe,  built 
on  priestcraft  and  caste,  swung  backward  to  skepti- 
cism and  spiritual  death,  but  the  noble  spirits 
struggling  for  free  thought  and  a  higher  manhood, 
sailed  west  in  the  Mayflower,  and  built  a  new  nation, 
and  opened  the  way  for  the  higher  civilization. 

The  Jews  were  the  best  developed  and  best  disci- 
plined among  all  the  nations ;  they  were  the  product 
of  the  best  stocks  and  long  years  of  suffering ;  they 
furnished  the  world  with  a  class  of  teachers,  law- 
givers, statesmen,  historians  and  poets,  unequaled 
in  the  history  of  the  race ;  they  still  maintain 
their  racehood  ;  their  character  is  the  result  of  the 
momentum  obtained  from  their  spiritual  training. 

Eeligious  forces  and  antagonistic  faiths  are  only 
means  to  ends  ;  even  the  most  extreme  notions  are 
methods  of  the  higher  development  of  man,  and 
factors  in  the  greater  evolution  of  truth. 

When  Borne  became  corrupt,  a  Yoltaire  set  all 
Europe  ablaze  with  his  magic  pen,  and  skepticism 


76         EVOLUTION  THROUGH  SUFFERING. 

became  an  epidemic.  But  Luther  wrote  a  thesis 
that  revolutionized  the  thought  of  the  century,  and 
the  pendulum  swung  back  and  left  Europe  on 
higher  spiritual  ground. 

An  Ingersoll,  with  the  powers  of  his  musical 
voice  may  attack  Christianity  in  the  public  halls  of 
the  nation  and  get  the  ear  of  the  crowd,  but  the 
great  law  of  antagonism  will  give  birth  to  some 
Father  Gleason,  who  throttles  his  adversary  with 
a  giant  grasp,  and  the  platform  gives  way  before 
the  pen,  and  the  people  are  lifted  upward  by  the 
battle  of  free  thought.  Materialism  drives  all 
spiritual  being  out  of  the  universe,  but  spiritualism 
opens  the  doors  and 

"  Thousands  of  spirits  walk  the  earth,  both  when  we  sleep  and  wake," 

Honest  strugglings  are  the  only  stair-ways  to  a 
higher  life ;  every  good  man  suffers  for  his  fellows, 
for  men  are  evolved  as  statues  from  the  block,  by 
mallet  and  chisel.  Could  we  analyze  the  great  and 
good,  we  would  find  two  great  factors,  self-denial 
and  personal  sacrifice,  united  by  a  spiritual  force. 
The  best  men  suffer  most,  for  suffering  is  a 
necessity  to  the  highest  development.  The  death 
of  Lucretia  expels  the  Tarquins  from  Homo  ;  the 


EVOLUTION  THROUGH  SUFFERING.  77 

sacrifice  of  Virginia  by  her  own  father  overthrew 
the  Decemviri  ;  if  truth  lives,  a  Socrates  must  drink 
the  hemlock ;  if  the  Gospel  be  planted  in  the 
household  of  the  Caesars,  Paul  must  be  beheaded  ; 
if  liberty  be  proclaimed  to  the  captives,  the  presi- 
dent must  die  a  martyr. 

The  law  of  equivalence  pervades  all  life,  and  the 
price  of  the  evolution  of  character  is  suffering. 

Jesus  was  made  perfect  through  suffering,  and  is 
no  exception  to  this  great  law  which  is  universal. 
The  greatest  power  of  Jesus  is  not  in  his  wonderful 
teachings  or  his  miraculous  works,  but  in  the 
purity  of  his  life,  his  love  for  the  race  as  seen  in 
his  voluntary  sacrifices.  Gethsemane,  the  court  of 
Caiphas,  Pilate's  hall,  and  the  Cross  on  Calvary, 
are  the  birthplaces  of  his  power.  The  law  is  uni- 
versal— perfection  through  suffering. 

MEDICAL   SCIENCE  AND   EVOLUTION. 

As  man  began  to  multiply  upon  the  earth  and 
diseases  and  sickness  began  to  prevail,  a  knowledge 
of  the  science  of  medicine  and  skill  in  healing  be- 
came necessary  for  the  better  preservation  of  life 
and  health ;  this  necessity  gave  birth  to  medical 
schools  and  developed  skill  in  the  profession. 

Medicine,  the  healing  art,  is  older  than  the  tables 


78  EVOLUTION  THROUGH  SUFFERING. 

of  stone,  and  stands  side  by  side  with  the  Ten 
Commandments  in  the  preservation  and  evolution 
of  man.  As  the  race  multiplied  upon  the  earth 
disease  and  sickness  prevailed  ;  the  effort  of  human 
genius  to  relieve  suffering  and  prolong  life  resulted 
in  the  development  of  the  science  of  medicine. 
The  great  school  at  Heliopolis  had  its  medical 
department,  centuries  before  Moses  received  the 
Law.  .ZEsculapius  was  born  at  Epidaurus  and 
educated  at  Chiron,  where  he  was  instructed  in  the 
healing  art.  He  visited  the  school  at  Heliopolis, 
then  returned  to  Athens  full  of  zeal  and  inspira- 
tion, where  he  lectured  and  practiced  medicine  for 
many  years,  classifying  and  naming  the  various 
diseases.  After  his  death  they  erected  a  temple  at 
Athens  to  his  memory  ;  hung  up  in  the  temple,  in 
tabulated  form,  were  the  names  of  the  various 
diseases  he  had  classified  ;  any  who  were  sick  went 
into  the  temple,  pointed  their  finger  to  the  name 
of  the  disease,  raised  their  hand,  invoked  the 
departed  spirit  of  the  inspired  healer,  and  were 
cured.  The  Greeks  believed  he  was  divinely  in- 
spired and  could  raise  the  dead. 

About    six    hundred    years    later    Hypocrates, 
called  the  father  of  medicine,   was  the  head  of 


EVOLUTION  THROUGH  SUFFERING.  79 

the  medical  school  at  Coan  ;  here  medical  knowledge 
began  to  crystalize  in  scientific  form ;  the  light  from 
the  classic  hills  of  Greece  began  to  shine,  and  many 
of  his  writings  are  still  found  in  our  old  libraries. 

About  six  centuries  afterward  Galen  was  born  at 
Pergamos;  he  developed  as  a  star  of  the  first 
magnitude  ;  at  the  age  of  seventeen  he  became  a 
devout  student  of  medicine  and  finally  established 
himself  at  Home  ;  he  was  an  ardent  disciple  of 
Hypocrates,  and  his  teachings  held  almost  universal 
sway  till  about  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  cent- 
ury. Medical  science  soon  began  to  take  root 
in  Germany,  France  and  England  ;  in  due  time 
America  became  the  equal  of  any  nation  both  in 
medical  science  and  medical  literature.  Colleges 
have  been  established,  lectureships  endowed,  and 
men  of  great  learning  and  intellectual  force  have 
crystalized  the  medical  thought  of  the  world  into 
a  science.  Medical  science  has  pushed  its  way 
into  Japan,  Australia  and  India,  until  the  science 
circles  the  globe  to  bless  man  physically,  mentally 
and  morally.  It  furnishes  an  example  of  develop- 
ment through  suffering.  The  great  law  of  evolu- 
tion again  comes  to  the  front.  The  suffering  of  the 
race  evolved  the  science  of  medicine,  which  in  turn 
relieved  the  suffering  race,  prolonged  life  and  in- 


80  EVOLUTION  THROUGH  SUFFERING. 

creased  the  mental  and  moral  possibilities  of  man  ; 
this  is  the  Divine  method  in  the  development  of 
mankind. 

SLAVERY,   EMANCIPATION  AND  DEVELOPMENT. 

The  law  of  evolution  through  suffering  and 
through  antagonistic  forces  is  most  emphatic  in 
the  African  problem ;  here  the  elevation  and 
development  of  a  race  of  despised  people  is  to  be 
accomplished  by  the  same  Divine  process,  the  law 
of  compensation ;  suffering  is  the  one  method  of 
emancipation.  As  the  centuries  of  toil  and  hard- 
ship made  Israel  the  most  complete  and  compact 
nation  among  men,  so  American  slavery  under  the 
Divine  Superintendent  will  raise  the  entire  African 
race  to  a  higher  plain.  It  was  the  active  operation 
of  this  law  that  brought  the  thousands  of  Africa's 
sons  to  till  the  soil  of  America.  Though  held  as 
bondmen  and  bought  and  sold  as  cattle  in  the 
market,  their  condition  was  at  least  no  worse  than 
in  their  own  native  land,  dwelling  in  darkness  and 
superstition.  To  be  a  slave  is  not  worse  than  to  be 
a  savage.  For  more  than  a  century  they  have  been 
schooled  in  industry ;  they  have  worked  in  the 
very  shadow  of  free  thought ;  the  arts  and  sciences 
have  been  their  companions  in  the  cotton  fields ; 


EVOLUTION  THROUGH  SUFFERING.  81 

they  have  breathed  the  atmosphere  of  human  free- 
dom and  enjoyed  to  some  extent  the  blessings  of 
Christianity ;  they  have  had  a  home  training  in 
the  best  government  in  the  world ;  and  this  system 
of  slavery,  that  has  been  so  much  abused,  will  prove 
by  the  law  of  compensation  to  be  the  greatest 
blessing  to  the  African  and  to  Africa,  that  God 
could  devise.  They  are  emancipated  just  at  the 
proper  time,  by  a  law  of  evolution ;  antagonistic 
forces  are  developed  and  let  loose,  and  emancipa- 
tion becomes  a  political  necessity ;  politics  and 
and  morals  coincide  at  least  once  in  a  century 
"The  Dark  Continent"  was  explored  by  the  im- 
mortal Livingstone  and  Stanley,  and  the  curtains 
of  the  future  raised,  just  at  the  time  when  students 
in  the  colleges  of  the  Freedmen  are  being  educated 
by  the  thousands.  Sitting  under  the  trees  of  the 
college  campus  are  the  future  railroad  kings  and 
merchant  princes,  bankers,  educators,  evangelists, 
and  civil  engineers  and  legislators  of  "  The  Dark 
Continent." 

The  antagonism  between  the  races  will  soon 
colonize  the  American  negro  in  his  own  land  and 
among  his  own  people,  to  lift  a  continent  of  savages 
to  the  highest  civilization.  These  bondmen  of  the 


82  E VOL UTION  THROUGH  S UFFERINQ. 

past  will  go  as  freedmen  of  the  present,  not  naked 
savages,  but  cultivated  men ;  educated  by  the  same 
nation  that  enslaved  them,  by  this  law  of  compen- 
sation under  Divine  direction. 

They  will  take  with  them  the  principles  of  free 
government  and  the  arts  and  sciences,  and  the 
Christian  religion,  and  through  these  agencies  a 
republican  nation  of  free  men  will  be  evolved 
from  a  benighted  Paganism  ;  Africa  is  destined  to 
become  one  of  the  great  nations  of  the  world. 

As  the  brightest  and  purest  diamonds  are  found 
in  Africa,  so  will  the  brightest  and  purest  minds  be 
found  among  the  sons  of  Ham,  who  once  taught 
and  ruled  the  world.  America  will  be  proud  in 
the  near  future  of  her  dark  sons  she  has  educated 
and  sent  forth  to  plant  a  new  nation. 

The  United  States  is  a  stronger  and  better  govern- 
ment than  would  have  been  possible  had  slavery 
not  existed.  The  emancipation  of  the  negro  was 
the  emancipation  of  the  nation.  Our  national 
influence,  power  and  prosperity  are  without  a 
parallel  in  the  history  of  the  race.  Evolution 
through  suffering  is  the  eternal  law. 

The  Divine  plan  for  the  development  of  man 
may  be  seen  not  only  in  the  physical  changes 


EVOLUTION  THROUGH  SUFFERING.  83 

going  on  in  the  earth,  but  in  the  growth  of  modern 
nations  and  the  more  recent  forms  of  religions 
thought  and  scientific  development  among  men. 

In  the  wide  range  of  religious  opinions  which  lie 
between  Catholicism  and  Protestantism,  though 
often  in  apparent  conflict,  yet  the  outcome  of  all 
the  antagonisms  is,  progress  and  human  develop- 
ment ;  even  spiritualism  and  the  Salvation  Army, 
extremes  among  the  extremest,  are  but  factors  in 
the  problem  of  race-development.  Error  serves  to 
better  define  truth,  and  discord  is  but  a  form  of 
revolution  to  lift  man  to  a  higher  plain. 

While  perfection  is  not  yet  attained,  there  is 
constant  progress,  and  Jehovah  is  doing  the  very 
best  possible  with  the  physical  environments  that 
set  limits  to  the  development  of  the  wonderful 
powers  of  the  race.  When  creeds  and  religious 
notions  become  illumined  by  Divine  truth,  and 
love  takes  the  place  of  selfishness,  the  world  will 
move  forward  with  untold  progress  and  man  be 
elevated  in  accordance  with  a  Divine  plan. 

Modern  nations  will  be  at  peace,  the  Jews  will 
return  to  Jerusalem,  and  there  will  yet  be  a  Holy 
Land  worthy  of  the  name;  the  Temple  and  the 
Holy  City  will  be  rebuilt,  and  the  chosen  people  of 


84  EVOL UTION  THR OUGH  S UFFERINO . 

God,  after  centuries  of  suffering,  will  reach  a 
higher  state  of  perfection  than  would  have  been 
possible  without  these  long  years  of  training. 

Discipline  is  essential  for  the  nation  and  the  indi- 
vidual; both  must  be  schooled  in  the  hard  facts  called 
history.  History  is  a  record  of  the  Divine  processes 
of  elevating  man  in  accordance  with  a  fixed  plan. 

The  process  seems  slow ;  but  the  on-going  years 
of  God  are  not  to  be  measured  by  man's  chronome- 
ters. Progress  cannot  be  estimated  by  the  almanac. 

Sometimes  centuries  pass  with  but  little,  apparent 
progress  ;  then  a  nation  is  born  in  a  day.  History 
is  neither  an  arithmetical  nor  a  geometrical  pro- 
gression ;  its  movement  onward  is  ethical. 

Man's  progress  depends  upon  two  independent 
factors — man's  environment,  which  is  the  constant 
force  exerted,  and  man's  will,  which  is  the  ever 
varying  factor  in  character. 

The  events  of  the  past  cast  their  shadows  into  the 
future  ;  the  law  is  the  same,  hence  history  ever 
repeats  itself. 

Arabia  will  receive  new  light,  and  the  dark 
places  of  the  oriental  world  will  be  illuminated, 
love  bind  the  race  in  one  universal  brotherhood, 
and  God  be  all  in  all. 


III. 
it  lite 


The  mysteries  of  the  antagonistic  forces  in  the 
world's  history  have  never  yet  been  satisfactorily 
unraveled  ;  the  distinction  between  antecedent  and 
cause,  consequent  and  effect,  has  not  been  recog- 
nized by  many  theorists ;  though  the  terms  are 
intimately  related,  the  difference  between  them  is 
very  great.  How  are  physical  phenomena  related 
to  moral  causes  ?  Is  there  a  key  to  this  mystery  ? 

The  great  revolutions  in  public  opinion,  the 
moral  upheavals  of  history,  the  rise  and  fall  of 
empires  that  make  up  the  biography  of  a  nation's 
life,  and  the  physical  cataclysms  in  the  geological 
world,  are  not  the  product  of  moral  causes,  but  the 
results  of  physical  environment ;  results  that  follow 
as  consequents  and  not  as  effects  ;  the  design  of 
these  results  by  the  Moral  Governor  is  to  produce 


86  THE  KEY  TO  THE  SECRET  VAULT. 

moral  development,  and  the  tendency  of  all  this 
mysterious  phenomena  is,  to  develop  the  highest 
powers  of  man. 

It  is  difficult  to  root  out  an  old  prejudice,  which 
has  been  honored  and  petrified  for  ages,  when  error 
is  so  nearly  related  to  truth.  If  man's  physical 
environment  will  best  account  for  his  present  con- 
dition ;  and  disaster  and  violence,  which  are  written 
upon  the  rocks  and  experienced  by  nations  and 
individuals,  should  prove  to  be  God's  method  of 
human  evolution  and  moral  development,  instead  of 
consequences  of  personal  transgression  ;  then  what 
would  be  lost  by  the  rejection  of  an  old  theory  ? 

Is  the  song  of  Milton,  that  introduced 

"Death  into  the  world  and  all  our  woe," 

to  continue  to  rule  the  faith  and  mould  all  the 
generations  ?  Grant  that  man  was  created  upright 
and  pure,  a  free  moral  agent  with  only  a  test  of  his 
loyalty  needed  to  complete  his  character ;  and  sup- 
pose he  should  fail  and  suffer  the  dreadful  penalty, 
does  it  follow  that  all  the  revolutions  and  catastro- 
phes of  earth,  volcanoes,  cyclones  and  earthquakes, 
ruin  and  devastation  and  destruction  of  life  are  the 
results 

"  Of  that  forbidden  tree  "  ? 


THE  KEY  TO  THE  SECRET  VAULT.  87 

The  earth  was  made  for  the  children  of  men, 
according  to  a  Divine  plan  ;  there  is  no  such  thing 
as  accident  or  chance,  and  how  could  the  mere 
creature  upset  all  the  plans  of  the  Creator  which 
had  been  matured  for  ages  before  man  made  his 
advent  ? 

If  man  was  pure,  then  why  should  he  commit  so 
terrible  a  deed  ?  Grant  that  man  is  free  and  subject 
to  temptation,  and  peccable  ;  he  can  only  be  free 
within  the  limits  of  the  laws  of  freedom. 

For  God  to  create  a  being  equal  to  himself  is 
absurd ;  this  were  to  duplicate  himself,  which  is 
self-destruction.  Man  must  be  a  limited  moral 
agent  under  the  direction  of  the  Creator ;  for  the 
facts  of  revealed  history  are  the  best  expositions  of 
the  secret,  mysterious  laws  of  spiritual  being,  and 
they  show  that  God  does  interfere  with  man's  moral 
agency.  For  if  the  Divine  Governor  could  harden 
Pharaoh's  heart  in  harmony  with  human  freedom, 
why  not  restrain  man  from  committing  so  direful 
a  deed  ?  Man  was  without  experience,  and  needed 
help  ;  why  was  it  withheld  ?  Does  not  this  solu- 
tion of  the  problem  of  suffering  and  violence  lay 
the  blame  upon  God  rather  than  man  ? 

But  suppose  it  to  be  true,  what  have  the  unborn 


88  THE  KEY  TO  THE  SECRET  VAULT. 

millions  to  do  with  the  disobedience  of  Eden  ? 
They  were  not  there,  and  could  not  be  parties  to 
the  transaction.  Whatever  may  be  the  beliefs  of 
men,  the  facts  remain  ;  there  is  at  least  some  other 
disturbing  factor  needed  to  account  for  the  physical 
and  moral  history  of  the  earth. 

"Why  debate  the  question,  which  wave  washed 
the  shell  upon  the  beach  ?  Does  opinion  change 
the  character  of  the  strange  beauty  or  the  place  it 
shall  occupy  in  the  cabinet  ?  A  phenomenon  is 
not  always  the  result  of  a  cause  ;  it  may  be  a 
method  of  development. 

The  true  key  to  the  mystery  of  suffering  and  vio- 
lence must  accord  with  all  the  facts,  and  make  God 
supreme  and  good,  and  place  man  at  the  head  of 
creation  as  the  great  climax  of  God's  plans. 

Man  is  a  creature  of  environments  ;  earth,  his 
present  home,  is  a  spiritual  gymnasium,  the  train- 
ing school  for  a  higher  state  of  being.  Suffering 
and  toil,  disappointment  and  death,  are  not  penal- 
ties, but  the  Divine  methods  of  spiritual  develop- 
ment. 

The  revolutions  in  the  early  history  of  the  globe, 
the  devastation  and  death  of  plants  and  animals, 
are  but  God's  methods  of  preparing  a  home  for 


THE  KEY  TO  THE  SECRET  VAULT.  89 

man  ;  the  seas,  lakes  and  river  systems  ;  the  mount- 
ain ranges,  the  great  valleys  and  distribution  of  the 
continents,  all  show  a  wise  plan  and  unity  of  design, 
all  in  the  interests  of  man.  Facts  prove  that  there 
has  been  more  happiness  and  enjoyment  than 
misery  and  suffering.  So  that  the  Supreme  Being 
is  both  wise  and  benevolent.  The  structure  of  the 
earth,  and  all  the  plants  and  animals  that  have 
appeared  in  the  distant  past,  in  their  structural 
forms,  rising  higher  and  higher  in  grades,  have  been 
both  prophecy  and  prelude  of  the  coming  man. 

The  decomposition  of  rocks  is  not  simply  a 
chemical  death,  but  a  prelude  of  a  higher  life  ;  the 
elements  are  reduced  to  soils  in  order  to  enter  into 
higher  combinations  in  living  plants,  which  in  turn 
are  to  furnish  food  for  the  higher  orders  in  the 
animal  kingdom. 

The  elevation  and  depression,  the  disruption  and 
contortion ;  the  vast  overturnings  and  apparent  con- 
fusion are  but  exhibitions  of  the  Divinest  order 
and  benevolent  purpose  ;  the  wealth  of  the  world 
which  had  been  forming  for  ages  was  thus  made 
accessible  to  man. 

The  formation  of  valleys  is  the  prophecy  of  the 
highest  civilization ;  were  man  compelled  to  live 


90  THE  KEY  TO  THE  SECRET  VAULT. 

in  the  mountains,  he  must  forever  remain  a  savage. 
The  storms  and  wild  winds  that  howled  through  the 
forgotten  centuries,  and  the  gloomy,  glacial  rivers 
that  triturated  the  mountains  and  smoothed  their 
sides  and  formed  the  soils  for  the  homes  of  the 
grasses  and  forests  ;  these  forests  were  buried  alive 
and  slept  in  their  tombs  for  ages,  to  be  packed  in  a 
small  compass  for  the  uses  of  man. 

When  all  was  ready,  man  made  his  advent  as  the 
head  of  creation,  the  fulfillment  of  all  the  promises 
of  the  past.  He  could  not  have  appeared  sooner ; 
he  could  not  have  lived  in  the  coal  period  without 
lungs  so  constructed  as  to  breath  carbonic  acid 
gas  ;  nor  in  the  age  of  the  saurians  unless  he  were 
a  salamander. 

Earth  must  cool  off,  the  climate  must  change 
and  the  atmosphere  become  purified ;  this  could 
only  be  done  through  ages  of  mighty  revolu- 
tions ;  deaths  and  burials  and  resurrections  are 
but  processes  of  developments,  not  consequents  of 
transgressions. 

This  globe  was  not  twisted  and  contorted  and 
thrown  into  spasms  by  any  event  that  took  place  in 
Eden.  The  earth  is  related  to  other  systems  of 
planets,  and  her  great  physical  revolutions  are 


THE  KEY  TO  THE  SECRET  VAULT.  91 

literal  catastrophes ;  events  related  to  the  stars  ; 
antagonistic  forces,  born  in  the  starry  worlds,  hav9 
produced  the  great  convulsions  which  threw  the 
old  seas  out  of  their  beds  and  lifted  the  great 
mountain  systems^  from  their  former  homes.  The 
movement  of  the  equinoctial  points  seems  to  be  the 
method  of  the  Great  Architect  in  producing  these 
changes. 

The  revolution  of  the  equinox  once  in  twenty-six 
thousand  years,  giving  birth  to  great  tides  once  in 
ten  thousand  years,  by  which  all  the  water  was 
lifted  to  one  side  of  the  globe,  and  the  extremes  of 
heat  and  cold,  are  alone  sufficient  to  account  for  the 
general  cataclysms  ;  among  all  the  generalizations 
of  the  facts  within  the  range  of  the  human  mind, 
this  seems  the  most  rational. 

It  is  an  astronomical  fact  that  man  made  his 
advent  when  the  earth  began  its  equinoctial  cycle, 
and  that  he  could  not  have  lived  upon  the  earth 
sooner,  is  demonstrable. 

That  the  earth  was  unfit  for  the  home  of  man 
sooner,  and  that  the  earth  is  still  unfit  for  his 
highest  development,  may  be  shown  by  the  fact 
that  man  is  now  limited  by  certain  geographical 
lines. 


92  THE  KEY  TO  THE  SECRET  VAULT. 

Man  and  tke  dog  may  live  in  almost  any  climate 
now  known  upon  the  earth.  But  man  can  only  be 
developed  between  fixed  lines  of  latitude.  The 
most  complete  men  and  highest  civilizations  are 
limited  to  the  best  climates.  Nations  began  in, 
and  were  limited  to,  the  valleys  ;  they  moved  west, 
but  were  bounded  by  a  narrow  belt  of  latitude,  for 
it  was  impossible  for  man  to  be  developed  north 
or  south  of  fixed  lines.  A  Plato  could  not  have 
been  born  in  Patagonia,  nor  a  Bacon  have  been 
produced  among  the  Bushmen. 

The  highest  civilization,  the  philosopher,  prophet 
and  poet,  are  limited  to  geographical  lines  ;  mind 
kas  its  zones,  the  spiritual  powers  are  accelerated 
or  retarded  by  the  influences  that  flow  into  the  soul 
from  all  sides ;  the  relation  of  matter  to  mind  is 
not  one  of  cause  and  effect,  but  of  antecedent  and 
consequent,  of  action  and  reaction;  a  Divine 
method  of  the  development  of  man. 

Mind  both  east  and  west  has  been  colored  by  the 
climate ;  it  is  seen  in  the  songs  of  the  poets,  the 
formula  of  the  philosopher,  and  the  metaphors  of 
the  prophet.  Homer  revealed  a  world  of  beauty 
in  terms  of  the  landscape ;  the  literature  of  a 
people  is  the  key  to  the  influence  that  nature  has 


THE  KEY  TO  THE  SECRET  VAULT.  93 

over  mind  ;  tneither  Solon  nor  Socrates,  David  nor 
Milton,  were  possible  south  of  the  equator  ;\the 
richest  sayings  of  Hugh  Miller  are  but  soul-pictures 
photographed  by  the  stony  hills  of  Cromarty. 

"The  banks  and  braes  and  streams  around  the  castle  of  Montgomery" 

inspired  Burns  to  sing  of  his  " Highland  Mary" 
in  notes  as  sweet  and  fragrant  as  "  the  hawthorn 
blossom." 

The  sweetest  songs  of  our  own  Bryant  are  but 
children  of  the  woods,  and  fragrant  with  the  odors 
of  the  forests  of  Berkshire.  The  weird  "  Poet  of  the 
Sierras"  must  be  a  Californian.  yThe  great  teachers 
were  all  neighbors  ;  Brahma  and  Buddha,  Confu- 
cius and  the  oriental  masters,  Moses,  Plato  and 
Paul,  were  all  born  and  developed  in  the  same 
climate.  \ 

(Therefore,  material  conditions  are  essential  to 
human  development.  The  highest  civilization  and 
the  most  complete  specimens  of  manhood  are  not 
yet  possible. \  The  earth  is  still  unmatured  ;  three 
hundred  volcanoes,  desolating  tornadoes,  mysteri- 
ous epidemics,  are  evidences  of  its  incompleteness.  ] 
If  God  took  ages  to  fit  the  earth  to  produce  a  blade 
of  grass,  are  not  long  years  needed  to  perfect  the 


94  THE  KEY  TO  THE  SECRET  VA  ULT. 

highest  being  ?  Man  is  the  last  order  of  being 
and  the  highest  possible,  but  is  not  yet  complete. 
Then  why  expect  peace  on  earth  and  good  will 
to  men  in  this  unfinished  state  of  things  ? 

The  distance  between  the  masses  and  the  models 
of  the  race  is  still  very  great,  and  the  distance 
between  the  best  models  of  the  race  and  the 
Ideal-Man  is  still  greater ;  but  God  has  a  method 
to  shorten  that  distance  by  a  change  of  environ- 
ment. 

EVOLUTION  AND  ENVIKONMENT. 

The  environments  of  man  set  limits  to  his  de- 
velopment and  make  necessities  seem  imperfections. 
The  immature  condition  of  the  earth,  the  birthplace 
and  present  abode  of  man,  is  not  the  cause  but  the 
occasion  of  all  the  apparent  defects  in  his  history. 

The  slow  development  of  vegetable  and  animal 
life  is  linked  with  the  slow  development  of  the 
earth  in  the  history  of  the  past.  Life  could  not 
advance  faster  than  the  adaptation  of  the  climate, 
which  was  essential  to  the  various  forms  of  being. 
The  character  of  the  crust  of  the  earth  was  the 
special  condition  of  all  life,  and  the  climate  fixed 
the  grade  of  being,  and  the  soil  and  climate  still 


THE  KEY  TO  THE  SECRET  FAULT.  95 

fix  the  bounds  of  civilization  and  the  limits  to 
human  development. 

The  earth  is  still  undergoing  changes ;  many 
forms  of  life  have  perished ;  the  extinct  races 
could  no  more  live  to-day  than  man  could  have 
existed  in  the  long-forgotten  ages  ;  the  swamps  are 
still  a  laboratory  of  diseases,  the  air  is  full  of  pesti- 
lence and  dreadful  epidemics ;  the  sun  has  its 
spots  and  the  solar  system  is  but  struggling  into 
harmonious  being,  necessary  to  the  higher  develop- 
ment of  man. 

Creation  is  a  Divine  process,  moving  onward  by 
a  fixed  law,  according  to  a  perfect  plan ;  man  must 
wait  till  God  completes  his  work,  before  he  can 
either  interpret  or  criticize  his  plans ;  each  man 
should  be  God's  coadjutor  in  carrying  forward 
this  Divine  scheme  of  human  perfection.  Man 
has  reached  his  greatest  perfection  during  the 
present  century,  chiefly  because  his  environment 
has  been  the  most  favorable. 

But  perfection  is  impossible  in  a  world  like  this, 
and  in  due  time  changes  will  come  which  will  create 
a  great  epoch  in  human  history.  This  earth  is  but 
a  laboratory  where  the  Divine  Chemist  is  com- 
pleting his  methods  concerning  man  ;  antagonistic 


96  THE  KEY  TO  THE  SECRET  VAULT. 

elements  will  destroy  the  earth  by  spontaneous 
combustion,  but  man,  with  a  new  and  more  com. 
plete  organization  than  is  possible  to  a  world  of 
gross  matter,  will  live  in  a  state  of  eternal  pro- 
gression toward  the  perfection  of  Deity. 

Man  is  a  citizen  of  the  universe ;  he  is  not 
limited  to  one  planet  or  one  system  of  suns.  He  is 
limited  only  by  his  environment;  he  is  endowed 
with  capabilities  to  become  a  partaker  of  the  Divine 
nature.  Perfection  belongs  to  God  alone,  but  man 
is  created  in  his  image.  The  Gospel  and  science 
are  progressive  systems  of  truth  to  meet  the  wants 
of  men  in  all  ages.  The  evolution  of  truth  keeps 
pace  with  the  evolutions  of  worlds.  Eternal  pro- 
gression is  the  plan  of  God. 

As  the  history  of  the  evolution  of  nations  shows 
development  in  a  special  direction,  so  the  limits 
of  progress  were  fixed  by  their  environment. 
Egypt  in  its  intellectual  development  drifted 
toward  science ;  Greece  toward  art  and  literature  ; 
Borne  toward  law ;  and  Israel  toward  religion. 
Their  environments  were  different,  hence  thought 
developed  in  these  different  directions.  The  en- 
vironments of  this  age  could  produce  none  of  the 
old  civilizations.  The  progressive  drift  of  man  has 


THE  KE  F  TO  'THE  SECRET  VA  ULT.  97 

been  in  the  realm  of  spiritual  truth,  which,  like  the 
tides  of  the  equinox,  have  ebbed  and  flowed  as  they 
were  related  to  the  changes  going  on  in  the  planet- 
ary systems  of  which  man  is  an  important  factor. 

Israel  is  the  father  of  our  present  civilization. 
The  inspiration  of  David's  immortal  lyre  still 
thrills  the  soul  of  this  century ;  the  glories  of 
Solomon  will  never  again  be  duplicated  by  any 
people ;  this  pilgrim  nation  fills  the  nooks  and 
corners  of  the  earth,  but  retains  its  character. 

The  Catholic  Church  was  organized  with  Christ 
as  the  head,  and  retained  the  doctrines  and  teach- 
ings of  the  Apostles,  and  crystalized  truth  into 
ecclesiastical  forms.  This  Church  was  filled  with 
the  missionary  spirit,  and  their  heroes  have  never 
been  surpassed ;  they  took  possession  of  every 
land,  and  by  voluntary  sacrifices  planted  the  cross 
in  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth.  This  organi- 
zation is  the  most  complete  ever  known  upon  the 
earth,  and  has  its  mission  among  men.  But  mind, 
like  climate,  changes ;  some  new  thought  turns 
whole  generations,  as  a  pebble  turns  the  coarse 
of  the  stream. 

Environments  gave  birth  to  a  Luther.  The 
Eeformation  was  a  great,  forward,  spiritual  move- 


98  THE  KEY  TO  THE  SECRET  VAULT. 

ment,  a  great  moral  force  which  threw  itself 
against  the  mightiest  of  organizations. 

Luther  was  the  spiritual  incarnation  of  his  age  ; 
he  represented  a  new  generation  of  free  thought ; 
and  his  collision  with  Catholicism  was  the  collision 
of  the  century  with  the  organized  centuries  of  the 
past. 

Who  can  estimate  the  results  of  the  shock  ?  It 
was  a  mighty  spiritual  revolution,  doing  for  mind 
what  geological  revolutions  did  for  soils  and 
precious  metals ;  it  brought  great  possibilities  in 
the  range  of  all  civilized  men.  It  broke  the  doc- 
trine of  centralization  of  power  into  fragments; 
decentralization  built  up  organizations  of  a  hundred 
creeds,  and  the  race  moved  up  by  the  law  of  antago- 
nistic forces  to  a  higher  plain. 

Deity  rallies  all  the  forces  and  makes  nations 
and  churches  and  leaders  of  men  all  his  co- 
laborers,  and  progress  is  as  rapid  as  the  environ- 
ment will  permit ;  but  the  progress  leaves  behind 
the  gross  and  material,  and  the  advance  is  toward 
the  spiritual.  As  the  planet  becomes  more  perfect, 
the  race  will  improve.  Who  can  estimate  the  evolu- 
tion of  mind  and  the  development  of  men  and  nations 
and  churches,  in  the  coming  centuries  ?  Onward  ! 


THE  KEY  TO  THE  SECRET  VAULT:  90 

upward,  is  the  law  of  the  race  as  it  moves  forward 
toward  the  millennium,  and  a  matured  earth. 

Then  shall  physical  catastrophes  cease  and  moral 
reforms  be  accomplished  ;    then  the  volcano  and 
earthquake,   the   cyclone   and  the  pitiless    storm 
shall  be  unknown ;    epidemic  and  pestilence  will 
cease  with  the  extremes   of  temperature  and  a 
purified  atmosphere ;    the  vegetable   and   animal 
life  will  be   more  complete.      Intemperance,  re- 
venge, treachery  and  selfishness,   the   moral  dis- 
eases of  the  race,  will  flee  before  the  reformer, 
as  pestilence  and  epidemics  flee  before  a  maturing 
planet.      Creeds,  social   problems,   political  plat- 
forms, will  find  a  common  ground  of  adjustment, 
and  peace  and  good-will  prevail.      The  cause  that 
will  produce  the  millennium  glory,  the  golden  age 
so  long  looked  for,  is  the  Supreme  Superintendent 
of  all  the  forces  of  the  earth,  adjusting  them  all  in 
the  highest  interests  of  man.     But  the  occasion  of 
peace  on  earth  and  good- will  to  men,  is  the  result  of 
the  change  of  man's   environment ;     the  Divine 
maturing  and  perfecting  the  physical  world,   by 
which  only  such  a  result  becomes  possible ;   this 
is  the  only,  rational  solution  of  the  great,  unsolved 
problem  of  suffering  and  wrong. 


100  THE  KEY  TO  THE  SECRET  VAULT. 

THE   EVOLUTION   OF  THE  SOUL   IN  SLEEP. 

"  We  are  such  stuff 

As  dreams  are  made  of,  and  our  little  life 
Is  rounded  with  a  sleep."  —SHAKESPEARE. 

Dream-land  has  not  been  completely  explored  ; 
the  survey  has  been  but  partial  and  the  field  notes 
imperfect. 

The  value  of  sleep  to  man  is  spiritual  rather 
than  physical  ;  it  is  more  than  bodily  rest,  it  is 
spiritual  development,  an  evolution  of  the  soul,  or 
highest  man. 

Sleep  is  a  spiritual  mystery  ;  a  phenomenon  of 
all  kinds  of  life,  from  the  anxious  man  to  the  rest- 
less fish,  all  have  their  times  for  sleep  ;  even  the 
flowers  seem  to  close  their  petals  and  retire  from 
the  din  and  bustle  of  this  noisy  world.  Sleep 
involves  the  relation  of  the  physical  to  the  spiritual. 

The  spiritual  withdraws  itself  from  the  outer 
world  and  takes  up  its  abode  in  the  nerve  centers, 
where  it  is  nourished  and  fed  from  the  innumera- 
ble, little  protoplastic  cells  which  contain  all  the 
vital  forces  of  the  body ;  sleep,  then,  is  the  spiritual 
nature  retiring  from  the  activities  of  the  body  for 
its  own  refreshment. 

In  this  state  the  soul  is  cut  off  from  the  material 


TRE  KE  Y  TO  THE  SECRET  VA  ULT.  1Q1 

world  and  permitted  to  explore  unfettered,  the 
spiritual  world,  and  often  feeds  on  sunlight  ad- 
ministered by  angel  hands. 

All  voluntary  action  with  the  outer  world  is  sus- 
pended ;  the  senses  are  closed,  and  all  objective 
life  ceases;  the  soul  retreats  into  the  subjective 
world,  a  realm  of  unconsciousness  to  our  waking 
state ;  but  mind  is  never  so  fully  awake  as  when 
in  sleep.  "I  slept,  but  my  heart  was  waking,"  is 
the  highest  formulation  of  this  mysterious  phe- 
nomenon of  life. 

There  is  a  background  to  our  being  ;  a  realm  of 
mystery  from  whence  comes  strange  thoughts, 
formulated  in  images  and  symbols,  which  often 
are  untranslatable  and  unlawful  to  utter.  A  sen- 
sorium  of  the  invisible ;  a  higher  consciousness ; 
an  opening  up  of  the  powers  of  the  understanding ; 
revelations  of  the  soul  expressed  in  enigmatical 
symbols.  Dreams  indicate  the  moral  state  of  the 
soul,  and  have  an  ethical  value ;  here  man's 
character  is  often  revealed  in  the  presence  of  his 
higher  self.  Sleeping,  and  dreaming,  and  visions, 
are  keys  to  the  invisible  working  of  the  soul,  when 
it  is  cut  off  from  the  physical  body — a  method  of 
spiritual  evolution  and  personal  development. 


102  THE  KEY  TO  THE  SECRET  VA  ULT. 

DEATH  A   SPIEITUAL   EVOLUTION. 

Death  is  a  part  of  the  great  plan  of  Jehovah,  a 
great  factor  in  the  evolution  and  perfection  of 
the  spiritual  man  ;  an  event  necessary  in  the  for- 
ward march  of  the  centuries  and  the  final  develop- 
ment of  the  race.  Man  could  not  become  perfect, 
as  the  image  of  his  Creator,  so  long  as  he  was 
related  to  gross  matter ;  if  he  were  to  live  in  a 
physical  world  for  the  purpose  of  discipline,  then 
he  must  have  a  physical  body  suited  to  his  con- 
dition ;  but  perfection  could  not  be  attained  while 
the  spiritual  man  was  fettered  by  the  physical 
body. 

As  his  material  environment  changed  and  became 
more  complete,  the  generations  were  more  and  more 
developed  ;  but  the  greatest  possible /advance  must 
come  through  the  preservation  of  the  best  speci- 
mens produced ;  so  death  was  essential  as  a  part 
of  the  history  of  man  upon  the  earth  ;  the  lowest 
forms  of  character  must  be  developed,  while  the 
highest  must  be  perpetuated ;  but  death  has  its 
compensation  by  the  law  of  equivalence  in  another 
life. 

What  is  death  ?  It  is  a  spiritual  evolution  by 
which  the  soul  is  released  from  all  material 


THE  KEY  TO  THE  SECRET  VA  ULT.  ia3 

environments  and  united  with  a  spiritual  body,  for 
the  purpose  of  a  complete  perfection  by  an  eternal 
progression  toward  the  Deity,  in  a  spiritual  world. 

When  the  protoplasm  has  been  impoverished 
and  is  unable  to  supply  the  wants  of  the  spiritual 
principle,  separation  takes  place  between  matter 
and  spirit,  in  which  gross  matter  is  left,  and  there 
is  elaborated  from  the  spiritual  organization  the 
inner  soul  essence  which  distinguishes  man  from 
the  animal. 

Hence  death  is  that  change  of  environment,  when 
the  soul  drops  gross  matter  and,  united  with  a 
spiritual  body,  becomes  a  more  perfect  organiza- 
tion, fitted  for  a  spiritual  environment,  for  the 
spirit  leaves  the  gross  matter  and  takes  on  an  inde- 
pendent existence,  and  is  guided  by  the  inner  soul 
essence  in  the  higher  spiritual  spheres. 

What,  then,  is  immortality  ?  The  essence  of  the 
soul  is  identical  with  the  Divine  Spirit,  and  man 
becomes  a  partaker  of  the  Divine  nature  ;  it  is  this 
nature  that  gives  man  immortality  ;  the  conscious 
relationship  with  the  Divine  Spirit.  This  spiritual 
body  or  environment  of  the  soul,  is  what  Paul 
recognizes  when  he  says,  there  is  a" natural  body 
and  a  spiritual  body  ;  the  soul,  then,  has  a  spirit- 


104  THE  KEY  TO  THE  SECRET  VAULT. 

ual,  historical  evolution  in  death  by  the  antago- 
nistic force  of  a  Divine  law.  Man  looses  by 
this  evolution  his  physical  nature,  circulation, 
digestion,  reproduction  and  sex.  He  retains  all 
his  spiritual  nature,  reason,  responsibility,  con- 
sciousness and  conscience,  personality  and  personal 
identity. 

This  ethereal  being  becomes  an  inhabitant  of 
the  spiritual  universe,  but  is  subject  to  the  great 
law  of  environment.  Perfect  order  prevails,  and 
development  follows  the  same  mathematical  law  in 
both  worlds. 

This  development  of  the  soul  through  the  spirit- 
ual organization,  is  the  crowning  work  of  Deity  on 
this  planet.  All  agencies  and  forces  center  in  the 
spiritual  development  of  man.  It  is  the  only  true 
philosophy  of  the  existence  and  wonderful  phe- 
nomena of  vegetable  and  animal  life ;  and  the 
marvelous  history  of  nations  and  of  men.  The 
past  is  but  a  partial  revelation  of  the  Divine  plan  ; 
only  stations  in  the  forward  movements  for  the 
development  of  man,  and  the  final  evolution  of  the 
human  soul.  This  new  organization  makes  man 
immortal  by  his  very  structure,  being  a  partaker  of 
the  Divine  nature. 


THE  KEY  TO  THE  SECRET  VAULT.  105 

EVOLUTION  AFTER  DEATH. 

Death  is  the  Key  to  the  Secret  Vault.  Man's 
treasure  depends  upon  his  conduct  in  this  life. 
His  environment  and  the  character  he  has  formed 
by  his  own  acts  not  only  determines  his  condition 
here,  but  also  the  place  in  the  sphere  which  he 
enters  upon  in  another  life,  according  to  the  law  of 
equivalence. 

Death  is  but  a  passport  to  a  higher  state  of 
being,  but  the  condition  of  the  soul  in  the  world 
beyond  is  fixed  by  the  law  of  equivalence ;  there 
man  enters  into  a  sphere  of  being  which  he  has 
made  for  himself  by  his  conduct  in  this  life  ;  for 
the  measure  of  character  in  all  worlds  is  by  the 
universal  rule — "According  to  his  works." 

Life  here  is  not  a  vain  pursuit  after  the 
treasures  that  lie  beyond  death,  treasures  locked 
up  in  that  Secret  Vault ;  but  all  real  effort  is  a 
method  of  development. 

THE    LAW   OF    EQUIVALENCE    IS    THE    LAW    OF    THE 
SPIRIT-WORLD. 

This  world  is  but  little  more  than  a  dream  of 
happiness  and  the  pursuit  of  shadows,  that  ever 


106  THE  KEY  TO  THE  SECRET  VAULT. 

elude  our  grasp  and  mock  our  best  efforts  of  energy 
and  skill. 

Wealth,  fame  and  pleasure,  when  obtained  can 
not  be  transmuted  into  happiness ;  for  happiness 
depends  on  character,  and  character  is  related  to 
the  life-beyond.  While  man's  environments  here 
have  much  to  do  in  the  development  of  his  life, 
his  innate  powers  and  capabilities,  when  properly 
used,  are  factors  in  modifying  his  condition  and 
determining  his  character,  and  often  change  his 
surroundings.  Man  is  accountable  in  all  condi- 
tions of  being,  for  the  use  or  abuse  of  the  talents 
God  has  committed  to  his  trust ;  no  responsible 
being  can  stand  justified  short  of  doing  his  whole 
duty,  which  is  determined  by  obedience  to  an 
enlightened  conscience  ;  for  duty  to  God  and  duty 
to  man  are  identical. 

Wealth,  is  presumed  by  the  majority  of  the  race 
to  be  the  Key  to  the  Secret  Vault.  The  pursuit  of 
wealth  is  our  age-characteristic.  We  are  a  race  of 
gold-hunters ;  culture  and  scholarship,  art  and 
religion  and  science,  ambition,  and  even  pleasure, 
are  all  sacrificed  for  wealth ;  business  before 
pleasure,  has  become  a  proverb. 

The  mercantile  spirit  is  the  spirit  of  the  century  ; 


THE  KEY  TO  THE  SECRET  FAULT.  107 

our  material   prosperity  has   outstripped  all  the 
peoples  of  the  past,  and  our  grandest  enterprises 
are  but  the  incarnation  of  this  spirit  of  the  age  ; 
time  and  talent,  home  and  heaven,  are  sacrificed  to 
the  goddess  of  wealth.    She  is  presumed  to  possess 
the  Key  to  the  Secret  Vault.    Money  may  be  trans- 
muted into  magnificent  grounds,  palatial  residences, 
elegant  appointments  and  splendid  equipages,  but 
alas  !  how  often  disappointment  and  despair  inhabit 
these  homes  of  luxury,  and  wealth  becomes  a  curse 
instead  of  a  blessing.     When  fortunes  are  made  in 
a  day  by  dishonest  methods,  and  man   sacrifices 
manhood  for  a  treasure  that  rust  will  devour  and 
thieves  steal,  wealth  is  an  allurement  and  self- 
destructive.     Stock-boards  and  professional  gamb- 
ling, and  lottery  schemes,  and  real  estate  booms, 
are  all  methods  of  double  dealing.    Fortunes  ob- 
tained by  fraud  and  falsehood  are  not  only  a  curse 
but  a  crime  ;   not  a  treasure  laid  up  in  the  Secret 
Vault,  but  the  despoiling   of  the   most  valuable 
goods  ever  entrusted  to  man  by  the  Proprietor  of 
the  universe  ;    it  is  overdrawing  the  account  of  the 
future,  by  the  extravagant  and  criminal  expendi- 
ture of  talent,  which  ought  to  have  been  wisely 
invested  in  the  present  for  future  use  ;   it  is  a  per- 


108  THE  KEY  TO  THE  SECRET  VA  ULT. 

version  of  capabilities  and  a  misuse  of  the  powers 
of  being,  powers  and  endowments  which  are  the 
chief  capital  to  be  invested  in  the  spirit- world ; 
such  a  misuse  of  capabilities  as  compel  the  soul 
to  enter  a  lower  place  in  the  sphere  of  being,  beg- 
gared and  poor  indeed  ;  with  infinite  obligations 
and  nothing  with  which  to  pay.  The  real  wealth 
of  all  worlds  is  character  ;  this  is  the  treasure  that 
never  fades,  the  reserve  fund,  locked  up  in  the 
Secret  Vault  of  the  spirit-world. 

Ambition,  dreams  of  this  key  to  happiness  and 
fame  offers  to  open  the  treasure-house,  but  the 
price  demanded  also  overdraws  the  accounts  of 
the  future ;  this  investment  is  also  a  dangerous 
risk,  a  deception,  and  the  proposal  is  a  wicked, 
heartless  fraud.  The  glory  of  earthly  crowns  and 
the  blasonry  of  the  victor  on  the  battle-field; 
triumphant  arches,  and  the  shouts  of  admiring 
multitudes,  and  monuments  of  marble,  are  not 
marketable  in  the  spirit-world,  where  manhood  is 
the  standard  of  values.  By  the  law  of  equivalence, 
which  is  the  same  for  all  states  of  being,  the 
proudest  and  most  victorious  despot  may  sur- 
render himself  to  the  wine-cup  and  cancel  all  his 
glory  by  the  perversion  of  his  own  powers.  The 


TEE  KEY  TO  THE  SECRET  VAULT.  109 

dreams  of  the  man  of  destiny  may  be  defeated  by  a 
rain-storm,  and  a  single  night  may  be  the  hinge  on 
which  may  turn  the  future  centuries  ;  the  historic 
field  of  Waterloo  can  only  be  interpreted  by  the 
dreary  solitudes  of  St.  Helena.  The  immortal 
victories  which  filled  Borne  with  the  treasures  of 
the  world's  spoiler,  are  linked  with  the  bloody 
assassination  of  the  mightiest  chieftain. 

Dom  Pedro  may  retire  at  night  with  imperial 
pride  and  apparent  safety,  and  the  treasure  of 
empire  at  command  ;  but  to-morrow  his  kingdom 
is  gone,  and  the  king  himself  becomes  an  exile  in 
a  day ;  his  defenses  are  his  weaknesses  ;  his  guards 
his  enemies ;  his  treasures  are  gone  and  he  a  bank- 
rupt ;  but  if  the  exile  be  a  man,  and  character 
remain  undimmed,  then  all  the  treasures  of  the 
Secret  Vault  are  his,  and  he  is  rich  beyond  measure, 
though  he  be  the  synonym  of  poverty. 

Moral  worth  excels  all  earthly  thoughts  of 
treasure,  as  eternity  excels  the  fleeting  movements 
of  time. 

"Lay  up  treasures  in  heaven,"  is  the  instruction 
of  the  Divine  Teacher,  with  an  emphasis  that  rings 
through  the  ages,  setting  forth  the  importance  of 
moral  values.  What  is  moral  wealth  but  the  fruits 


110  THE  KEY  TO  THE  SECRET  VAULT. 

of  a  willing  obedience  to  an  enlightened  con- 
science ?  The  fruits  of  the  voluntary  acts  of  kind- 
ness and  charity  to  our  fellow-man.  Acts  of  mercy, 
kindness,  charity  and  spontaneous  deeds,  spring- 
ing from  unselfish  motives,  are  the  treasures  that 
never  grow  old,  and  that  are  deposited  in  the 
Secret  Vault,  where  they  bear  interest  forever. 

Deeds  are  the  exponents  of  character ;  the  real 
wealth  of  the  soul ;  deposits  made  for  the  future ; 
not  notions,  beliefs,  resolutions  or  professions,  but 
unselfish,  spontaneous  action  in  the  interest  of 
others.  These  are  the  permanent  investments, 
secured  by  the  immutable  word  of  the  Proprietor 
of  the  universe. 

A  standard  of  morality  is  an  essential  in  the 
development  of  the  race,  and  the  formation  of 
personal  character.  The  state,  the  church  and 
the  home  are  responsible  for  the  instruction  and 
example  that  shall  shape  the  moral  character  of 
the  coming  generations.  The  Ten  Commandments, 
the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  the  rest  day,  and  the 
doctrines  of  love  and  mercy,  truth  and  charity,  are 
universal  truths,  that  are  the  common  heritage  of 
the  race,  and  of  all  men  alike  ;  they  are  inalienable, 
and  must  not  be  interfered  with  by  church  or  state, 


THE  KEY  TO  THE  SECRET  VAULT.  HI 

Protestant,  Catholic,  or  skeptic  ;  for  the  perpetuity 
of  the  nation,  and  the  future  inheritance  of  all  men 
alike,  depend  upon  moral  character,  which  is  the 
result  of  moral  training. 

The  great  majority  of  the  children  of  the  state  get 
no  moral  discipline  at  home,  hence  the  duty  of  the 
state  is  to  fix  a  moral  standard  and  provide  moral 
instruction  for  the  future  citizen  ;  the  state  is  the 
guardian  of  the  constitutional  rights  of  the  citizen, 
and  all  the  machinery  of  the  government  should 
be  in  the  interests  of  the  individual.  The  doctrine 
of  the  Kepublic  is,  man  is  greater  than  the  consti- 
tution and  greater  than  the  state  ;  the  individual 
right  of  the  citizen  is  the  foundation  of  all  good 
government;  but  the  citizen  has  moral  rights  as 
well  as  political  privileges,  and  the  nation  is 
*  organized  to  secure  these  rights ;  for  the  perpe- 
tuity and  usefulness  of  the  government  depends  on 
the  rectitude  and  character  of  her  citizens.  The 
nation  should  have  a  conscience  and  a  moral  code, 
as  well  as  a  constitution,  in  order  to  meet  all  the 
wants  of  the  citizen. 

The  American  citizen  is  supposed  to  believe  in 
"  the  Supreme  Judge  of  the  world. "  No  man  should 
be  eligible  to  any  office  in  the  gift  of  the  people,  who 


112  THE  KEY  TO  THE  SECRET  VAULT. 

does  not  appeal  to  "the  Supreme  Judge  of  the 
world"  for  the  rectitude  of  his  intentions.  The 
nation  is  supposed  to  believe  in  a  personal  God, 
who  superintends  the  affairs  of  the  world  and 
watches  over  the  interests  of  the  state  with  a 
Providential  care,  and  hence  proclamations  for  days 
of  thanksgiving  and  public  worship.  The  nation 
believes  in  prayer,  and  has  made  provision  for 
chaplains  both  in  the  army  and  halls  of  legisla- 
tion ;  she  believes  in  the  Christian  Sabbath,  and  has 
set  apart  one  day  in  seven  in  which  all  are  relieved 
from  the  duties  of  public  offices  ;  and  the  Ameri- 
can Sabbath  is  a  day  in  which  no  legal  work  can 
be  done  by  the  state,  and  on  which  every  American 
citizen  is  entitled  to  rest  from  all  secular  employ- 
ment. 

The  nation  believes  in  the  Bible  ;  and  adminis- 
ters the  oath  of  office  to  the  President  and  Supreme 
Judges,  and  others,  with  the  hand  resting  upon  it. 
Therefore,  it  is  not  only  the  right,  but  the  sacred 
duty  for  the  nation  to  see  that  the  rising  genera- 
tions be  instructed  in  the  morals  of  the  state,  and 
Congressional  action  should  make  provision  for  the 
moral  instruction  of  the  future  citizen  of  the  state, 
in  her  public  schools  and  colleges.  The  state  has 


T RE  RET  TO  THE  SECRET  V'A  ULT.  H3 

the  same  right  to  provide  a  text- book  in  morals,  as 
in  arithmetic  or  grammar ;  and  she  is  culpable  if 
she  does  not  discharge  this  sacred  duty  ;  for  intelli- 
gence without  morality  is  a  political  evil,  that 
sooner  or  later  will  destroy  the  best  civilization 
and  transmute  the  citizen  into  the  savage. 

PROGRESSION — THE    DIVINE    METHOD    OF    EVOLUTION 
IN  THE  FUTURE. 

Whatever  may  have  been  man's  defects,  the 
history  of  the  race  has  been  one  of  progression. 
The  history  of  the  future  life  will  be  the  same,  for 
man  by  his  endowment  and  environment  is  a 
progressive  being.  The  future  is  not  a  second 
probation  or  a  test  of  character  by  trials,  but  a 
development  of  innate  powers  under  more  favor- 
able opportunities ;  neither  is  it  a  world  where 
man  is  to  be  purified  by  punishment ;  though 
penalties  are  essential  to  the  administration  of 
good  government  and  for  the  higher  development 
of  man,  suffering  with  moral  beings  must  be  volun- 
tary, and  hence  cannot  partake  of  the  nature  of 
punishment ;  but  is  a  Divine  method  of  develop- 
ment. 

The  future   affords  to   man   a   mot©   favorable 


114  THE  KEY  TO  THE  SECRET  VAULT. 

environment ;  being  clothed  with  a  spiritual  body, 
and  being  released  from  the  embarrassment  of 
gross  matter ;  so  that  under  the  Divine  Superin- 
tendency  every  man  moves  forward  forever,  from 
the  grade  in  which  death  leaves  him,  through  vast 
cycles  of  being  toward  the  perfection  of  Deity. 
But  the  condition  in  which  man  enters  the  future 
at  death,  depends  upon  the  use  he  has  made  of  his 
powers  and  the  character  he  formed  in  his  physical 
environment;  so  that  any  loss  sustained  in  this 
world  by  failure  of  duty  dwarfs  the  powers  and  is 
eternal  loss  in  all  worlds  ;  the  law  of  progress  and 
perfection  is  immutable — no  individual  progress 
without  personal  effort ;  so  that  each  determines 
for  himself  his  grade  in  the  spirit- world. 

Work,  activity,  using  the  powers  with  which  God 
has  endowed  us,  is  the  only  method  of  develop- 
ment, or  law  of  progression.  Those  that  entered 
the  spirit-life  in  infancy  and  youth,  are  to  be 
developed  in  this  new  sphere  of  being  without 
loss ;  the  law  of  equivalence  provides  for  all 
apparent  disadvantages. 

The  work  of  the  spirit-land  is  a  ministration  of 
love ;  the  strong  help  the  weak,  the  wise  instruct 
the  ignorant,  the  good  assist  the  bad  ;  they  are  all 


THE  KEY  TO  THE  SECRET  VA  ULT.  115 

ministering  spirits.  There  seems  to  be  universal 
sympathy  existing  among  all  grades  of  spiritual 
being;  a  fellowship  expressing  itself  in  works  of 
benevolence,  and  methods  of  helping  each  other. 

Works  of  mercy  are  the  highest  expression  of 
pure,  spiritual  life  known  in  the  highest  realms  of 
being  ;  helping  others  is  the  chief  employment  of 
spiritual  beings  in  all  worlds,  and  the  only  law  of 
progress  revealed.  Some  are  sent  from  the  higher 
spheres  and  far-off  worlds  of  light,  who  have  spent 
ages  in  this  Divine  method  of  progression  ;  they 
come  to  lift  their  fellows  to  greater  hights,  and  by 
this  process  lift  themselves.  As  in  mathematics, 
so  in  morals,  development  is  in  the  ratio  of  duty  ; 
light,  attraction,  chemical  combinations  and  morals 
are  all  governed  by  mathematical  law.  The  same 
law  of  evolution  is  true  for  all  spheres,  develop- 
ment by  antagonisms  ;  progress  is  in  the  ratio  of 
improved  opportunities,  and  the  law  of  compensa- 
tion where  there  has  been  a  lack  of  opportunity  ; 
thus  man  moves  on  and  on  !  forward  and  upward, 
from  sphere  to  sphere,  through  countless  worlds  of 
light,  ever  progressing  toward  the  infinite  per- 
fection of  God.  Eternal  evolution,  by  the  Divine 
method,  is  the  immutable  law  of  all  worlds. 


116  THK  ££¥  TO  THE  SECRET 

SELFISHNESS,  THE  ACTIVE,  OUTWAKD   EXPRESSION  OF 
THE  LAW  OF  ANTAGONISM. 

Selfishness  is  not  the  opposing  force  in  the 
spiritual  universe  ;  the  opposite  pole  and  counter 
current  of  all  good.  It  is  the  natural  instinct  of  all 
created  being,  born  in  us,  and  is  a  part  of  our 
natural  endowment. 

Each  being  is  the  chief  object  of  interest  to  its 
own  self  ;  the  grand  center  about  which  all  else  is 
presumed  to  revolve. 

This  great  law  seems  to  cast  its  shadow  on  all 
existences ;  the  animal  and  vegetable  kingdoms 
are  exponents  of  the  law.  The  strong  oppress 
the  weak ;  the  cruel,  armed  with  weapons  of 
destruction,  slay  the  defenseless  ;  the  powerful  are 
merciless,  and  the  wise  and  cunning  outwit  the 
simple  and  stupid  ;  self  is  the  ruling  passion  of  all 
the  animal  world. 

The  history  of  the  animal  kingdom  is  but  an 
exposition  of  selfish  instincts ;  birds  and  beasts, 
reptiles  and  insects,  are  demonstrations  of  the  law. 

The  shadow  falls  on  the  vegetable  world.  The 
poisonous  plants  emit  their  noxious  exhalations 
and  destroy  all  their  neighbors. 

The  deadly  Upas  lives  alone,  because  it  lives  for 


THE  KRY  TO  THE  SECRET  VAULT.  11? 

self  ;  within  the  range  of  its  poisonous  influence, 
nothing  can  exist. 

The  Canada  thistle  asserts  its  right  to  the  soil 
and  is  more  difficult  to  dispose  of  than  the  Irish 
land  question. 

The  May  weed  claims  the  sunny  South  for  its  home 
and  dwells  among  the  aristocrats  in  the  streets  of  the 
chief  cities ;  the  gympson  has  squatted  as  sovereign 
of  the  West,  and  the  mission  mustard  refuses  to 
surrender  in  the  best  valleys  of  Santa  Clara. 

When  this  law  expresses  itself  in  man,  it  is  more 
emphatic  and  is  often  called  depravity. 

Volumes  have  been  written  on  the  origin  of 
thorns  and  thistles  and  human  meanness ;  and 
volumes  more  on  the  remedies  for  these  supposed 
moral  diseases ;  but  selfishness  is  part  of  our- 
selves ;  it  is  an  inheritance,  as  the  color  of  the 
hair;  man  is  not  responsible  for  this  trait,  and 
nobody  is  to  blame. 

There  is  implanted  in  man,  an  antagonistic 
principle  which  under  the  power  of  the  will  may 
cancel  selfishness  ;  and  here  is  the  basis  of  man's 
responsibility.  Every  man  may  rise  higher  and 
higher  by  his  own  effort  till  the  race  reaches  the 
Golden  Kule\ 


118  THE  KEY  TO  THE  SECRET  VAULT. 

This  rule  is  the  great,  spiritual  climax  of  human 
attainment ;  the  objective  point  of  the  nation  and 
the  individual. 

That  man  may  attain  this  high  moral  elevation, 
is  demonstrated  by  the  life  of  Jesus,  the  complete 
model  man  and  the  only  unselfish  Being  that  ever 
trod  the  earth.  He  lived  for  others,  and  taught 
others  how  to  live. 

Selfishness  crops  out  in  innocent  childhood,  in 
church  creeds,  in  the  denominational  spirit,  and  in 
every  phase  of  human  life. 

The  atmosphere  of  love  is  the  only  remedy  for 
selfishness.  Jesus  was  love  incarnate  ;  when  he 
was  reviled,  he  reviled  not  again.  Selfishness  had 
no  place  in  his  spirit,  hence  it  never  manifested 
itself  in  his  personal  history  among  the  worst  of 
men. 

Love  is  the  supreme  law  of  all  pure  spirits,  as 
gravity  is  the  supreme  law  of  all  gross  matter. 

God  is  love.    Love  is  the  fulfilling  of  the  law. 


THE  CAPITOL  OF  THE  UNIVEKSE,  OE 
HOME  OF  DEITY. 

Where  is  Our  Father's  house  of  many  mansions  ? 
Thought  pushes  the  question  to  the  farthest  limits 
of  imagination;  all  healthy  mind  demands  an 
answer.  Is  there  not  some  place  in  the  great  uni- 
verse, some  grand  center  among  the  systems  of 
worlds ;  some  capital  city,  the  abode  of  Deity, 
from  which  he  superintends  all  the  work  of  his 
hands  ? 

Man  can  have  no  conception  of  God  without  form 
and  place,  for  he  made  man  after  his  own  image. 

Science  and  discovery  have  extended  the  bounda- 
ries of  the  universe,  until  earth  is  but  a  mere  speck 
among  the  infinite  worlds,  which  move  in  the 
measureless  domain  of  Deity. 

This  throne  of  the  Omnipotent  is  certainly  not 
in  the  bounds  of  our  solar  system.  There  are 
eighteen  millions  of  suns  and  solar  systems  revolv- 
ing round  a  common  center,  somewhere  in  the 
infinite  depths  of  space,  (Warren). 

There  are  single  stars  which  have  more  attractive 
force  than  all  the  known  matter  in  the  universe 
could  account  for.  Sirius  and  Vega  and  other 


130  THE  CAPITOL  OF1  THE  UNIVERSE. 

stars  are  white  with  the  inconceivable  velocity  at 
which  they  are  moving  through  space.  Job  named 
this  group  Chimah,  a  beautiful  Chaldaic  word 
which  is  the  Divine  key  to  the  influence  of  these 
stars  upon  the  earth.  The  word  means,  pivot  or 
axle,  the  central  point  of  turning. 

It  is  now  an  astronomical  fact,  demonstrated  by 
a  series  of  independent  calculations,  confirming 
the  revelation  of  Job  and  the  poetic  insight  of  the 
Greeks,  that  Alcyone,  the  brightest  star  in  the 
group,  is  the  great  center  or  axle  around  which 
our  earth  is  revolving.  M.  Madler  is  the  best 
interpreter  of  Job ;  for  he  has  mathematically 
demonstrated  Alcyone  to  be  the  luminous  hinge  in 
the  heavens,  on  which  is  turning  the  solar  system. 
Earth  and  all  her  sister  planets  are  moving  with  a 
velocity  of  four  hundred  and  twenty-two  thousand 
miles  a  day,  in  an  orbit  that  it  will  require  ages  to 
complete.  Man  has  traveled  through  space  since 
the  days  of  Eden,  and  yet  he  is  still  among  the 
same  stars  that  Adam  saw  ;  for  we  have  not  moved 
through  one  second  of  the  great  arc  of  the  solar 
system  since  the  world  began.  Yet  Alcyone  is  not 
the  center  of  the  universe  of  worlds. 

The  analysis  of  the  light  from  these  more  distant 


THE  CAPITOL  OF  THE  UNIVERSE.  121 

worlds  proves  that  they  all  belong  to  one  great 
system.  A  ray  of  light  from  the  star  Yega  would 
require  forty-five  years  to  reach  the  earth ;  a  star 
of  the  twelfth  magnitude  could  not  send  a  ray  of 
light  to  earth  in  less  than  four  thousand  years ; 
remoter  stars,  measured  by  the  velocity  of  light 
are  six  thousand  years  distant  from  us.  Had  a 
photographer  set  his  camera  in  one  of  these  remote 
worlds,  to  take  the  garden  of  Eden  in  its  pristine 
glory,  he  must  wait  till  the  twentieth  century 
before  he  could  get  an  impression.  Wonderful 
universe  !  Yet  the  spectrum  analysis  shows,  that 
the  laws  of  light,  motion  and  gravity  are  the  same 
in  all  worlds,  and  that  all  the  sun-systems  are  a 
unit.  We  are  flying  through  space  in  a  tempera- 
ture two  hundred  degrees  below  zero,  yet  our 
velocity  is  so  great  that  our  climate  is  comfortable. 
Man,  by  the  help  of  instruments  of  his  own 
invention,  measures  stars  billions  of  miles  away  ; 
thus  aided  by  science,  thought  moves  on  in  the 
illimitable  space,  till  imagination  with  tired  wing 
rests  in  the  unsurveyed  territory,  in  the  center  of 
eighteen  millions  of  sun-systems,  where  Jehovah, 
the  Superintendent  of  the  universe,  dwells  ;  here 
is  the  capitol  of  the  King  in  his  glory  ;  the  council 


122  THE  CAPITOL  OF  THE  UNIVERSE. 

chamber  of  God;  here  Jehovah  dwells  in  light 
which  no  man  can  approach  unto ;  the  attributes 
of  truth  and  love,  justice  and  goodness  radiate  from 
his  brow,  and  the  golden  light  floods  the  universe. 
He  holds  the  mightiest  and  remotest  stars  in  his 
hand,  watches  the  motions  of  the  millions  of  sys- 
tems he  has  created;  suns  with  their  planetary 
hosts.;  worlds  upon  worlds  flying  through  trackless 
space,  and  vast,  unbounded  solitudes,  each  obedient 
to  his  will ;  every  planet  coming  to  its  meridian 
without  the  loss  of  a  thousandth  part  of  a  second 
in  ten  thousand  years  ;  yet  this  God  is  the  Father 
of  man.  Our  Father  !  so  mindful  of  all  his 
creatures,  that  he  hears  the  young  ravens  when 
they  cry,  and  not  a  sparrow  falls  to  the  ground 
without  his  notice.  He  hears  the  softest  whisper 
of  his  own  children.  Here,  he  who  was  without 
beginning  first  began  his  work  ;  here  he  dwells  in 
person,  superintending  and  upholding  all  things 
by  the  word  of  his  power.  In  the  highest  heaven, 
amid  the  seven  golden  candlesticks,  and  the  seven 
churches,  and  the  seven  trumpets,  he  sitteth  in  the 
circle  of  the  heavens ;  he  speaketh  to  all  his 
children,  saying — 

ALL  MINE  IS  THINE  ! 


KECAPITULATION. 

1.  God  created  matter  out  of  what  was  not 
matter,  according  to  our  test,  or  measurement- 
trie  seen  came  out  of  the  unseen. 

2.  Creation  and  planet-formation  were  neces- 
sary,  that  Deity   might   give   expression   to   his 
thoughts  and  emotions. 

3.  Earth  must  take  its  place  in  a  system  of 
planets  before  it  could  be  endowed  with  any  life- 
giving  properties. 

4.  The  force,  called  gravity,  was  necessary  to 
keep  the  sun  from  robbing  the  earth  of  all  vitality 
and  productive  power. 

5.  This  unlimited  force,  called  gravity,  is  the 
persistent  will  power  of  Deity. 

6.  All  mineral,  vegetable  and  animal  evolution 
is  governed  by  mathematical  law ;     all   chemical 
forms,  musical  harmony,  planetary  motions,  moral 
and  spiritual  development,  are  all  governed  by  this 
universal  law  ;    the  basic  principle  of  mathematics 
is  truth,  and  truth  is  an  attribute  of  God. 


124  RECAPITULATION. 

7.  All  the  apparent  failures  we  see  in  the  world 
are  due  to  a  partially  and  imperfectly  developed 
planet,  in  its  relation  to  our  solar  system,  which 
affects  its  environments. 

8.  All  vegetable  and  animal  life,  the  evolution 
of  national  and  personal  character,  are  determined 
by  their  environments. 

9.  Man  never  fell  from  a  higher  state  of  per- 
fection,  but   his   history   has   ever  been  one  of 
progress  according  to  a  Divine  plan. 

10.  The  advance  of  science,  the  development  of 
man  and  the  progress  of  civilization  have  been  in 
exact  ratio  of  the  maturity  of  the  earth  and  their 
environment. 

11.  The  law  of  antagonism  is  the  Divine  method 
of  operation  in  all  nature  for  the  purpose  of  de- 
velopment ;  it  determines  the  law  of  equivalence 
or  compensation,  which  is  universal. 

12.  Man's  spiritual  nature  is  development  from 
gross  matter,  under  special  Divine  superintendence. 

13.  There  is  developed   from   man's   spiritual 
being,  by  a  law  of  evolution,  an  inner,  soul  essence, 
which  distinguishes  man  from  the  lower  animals. 
In  this  inner  soul  of  man  God  manifests  himself 
and  holds  communion  with  his  children. 


RECAPITULATION.  125 

14.  All   men   as   well   as   animals    are  under 
Divine    law,    and    are    therefore    limited,    free 
agents. 

15.  All  the  sciences  and  religious  creeds  are  but 
agencies  under  the  Divine  management  in  the  de- 
velopment of  the  race. 

16.  God  has  given  man  a  perfect  pattern,  a  rule 
of  life,  in  Jesus  the  Ideal-Man. 

17.  The  Divine  incarnation  is  not  limited  to 
Jesus,  for  God  dwells  in  all  his  children. 

18.  The  distribution  of  rewards  and  punish- 
ments is  in  accordance  with  the  law  of  exact  equiva- 
lence. 

19.  There  is  in  the  universe  of  nature  a  cen- 
tral unit  of  intelligence  and  power  from  which 
emanates  all  the  wisdom  and  force  that  are  mani- 
fested. 

20.  This  great  center  of  intelligence  and  power 
is   God,  in   whose  image  and  likeness  man  was 
created. 

21.  This  center  of  Divine  Intelligence  is  not 
located  within  our  solar  system,  but  in  the  midst 
of  the  sun-systems  of  the  universe. 

22.  The  earth  and  our  solar  system  is  but  a 
colony  of  yesterday's   planting,  when   compared 


126  RECAPITULATION. 

with  the  eternity  of  the  fixed  stars  and  other  sun- 
systems,  in  the  midst  of  which  Deity  dwells. 

23.  Man's  spiritual  nature  is  organized  upon 
the  principle  of  eternal  progression  in  knowledge 
and  character. 

24.  Man  retains  his  identity  and  recognizes  his 
fellow  man  in  the  spirit-world. 

25.  God  could  not  have  done  any  more  for  man 
than  he  has  done. 

26.  Earth  is  continually  changing  from  gross 
matter  into  ethereal  essences  and  spiritual  intelli- 
gences. 

27.  God  is  manifest  both  in  the  truth  of  science 
and  religion,  for  religion  and  science  are  but  one. 

28.  All  the  power  and  intelligence  manifested 
in  this  world  are  but  the  expressions  of  the  Divine 
thought. 

29.  All   the   forces   in   nature   are    expressed 
through  the  law  of  antagonism,   between    solar 
attraction  and  gravity  of  the  earth. 

30.  What  we  call  Selfishness  is  but  an  active, 
outward  expression  of  the  law  of  antagonism ;  it  is 
universal  and  Divine  in  its  origin. 

31.  No  force  in  nature  is  lost,  but  is  either  used 
directly  or  is  transmuted  into  electric  agencies  and 


RECAPITULATION.  127 

used  in  the  development  of  vegetable  and  animal 
life,  which  in  man  assumes  the  forms  of  intelli- 
gence, individuality  and  personality. 

32.  Man,    in   all   the   events   of   history,   and 
forward  movements  of  civilization  and  personal 
development,  is  a  co-worker  with  God. 

33.  Relatively,  all  men  are  equal,  but  positively 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  equality  existing  among 
men.      Equality  is  impossible  until  all  environ- 
ments are  the  same. 

34  The  Key  to  the  Secret  Vault  is  death  ;  and 
our  treasure  there  is  just  what  we  have  made  it, 
the  results  of  the  acts  in  this  life. 

35.  An  enlightened  conscience,  illuminated  by 
Divine  truth,  is  the  safest  guide  to  the  highest 
plain  of  life. 


THE  AUTHOE'S  VISION. 

Being  weary,  I  laid  me  down  upon  my  lounge  in 
the  office  and  fell  into  a  kind  of  sleep.  In  a  half 
waking  condition,  I  thought  I  was  walking  in  a 
beautiful  garden,  through  nice,  grassy  lawns  richly 
embowered  and  ornamented  with  beautiful  flowers 
of  the  most  delicate  hue  and  exquisite  fragrance. 

This  garden  seemed  alive  with  most  beautiful 
birds  of  the  richest  plumage,  and  while  their 
melodious  notes  of  heavenly  music  swept  through 
the  groves  and  mingled  with  the  rich,  mellow  light 
that  made  the  place  sacred  and  filled  every  nook 
with  a  silent  awe.  My  path  led  to  the  foot  of  a 
little  mound  some  six  or  eight  feet  high  ;  there 
I  was  attracted  by  a  spring  of  water,  clear  as 
crystal,  in  the  form  of  a  circle,  about  six  feet  in 
diameter ;  the  water  flowed  out  beneath  my  feet 
among  the  grass ;  while  I  stood  reflecting  and 
admiring  the  sparkling  fountain,  I  beheld  a 
beautiful  silver  trumpet,  about  eighteen  inches 
long,  floating  about  upon  the  glassy  bosom  of  the 
enchanting  water. 

While  wondering  at  this  strange  sight,  a  most 


THE  AUTHOR'S  VISION.  129 

beautiful  woman,  clad  in  a  pure  white  robe,  with 
long  golden  hair  playing  with  the  breeze,  appeared 
before  me. 

With  graceful  movement  she  stooped  and  took 
up  the  silver  trumpet,  and  blew  one  long,  loud 
blast,  that  was  answered  by  the  neighboring  hills  ; 
at  the  echo  of  this  strange  and  beautiful  note, 
innumerable  little  fish,  white  as  snow  and  almost 
transparent,  came  to  the  surface  of  the  spring  ; 
from  thair  mouths  came  forth  in  great  numbers, 
the  most  beautiful  prismatic  gems,  which  floated 
about  and  formed  themselves  in  wreaths  and 
crowns  of  most  exquisite  beauty,  quivering  in  the 
light  as  if  filled  with  spiritual  life. 

Astounded  and  charmed  by  the  enchanting  beauty, 
I  asked,  "  What  does  all  this  mean  ?  "  The  beauti- 
ful being  that  blew  the  trumpet  spoke  in  gentle 
tones,  and  said,  "This  spring  of  clear  water  is 
the  symbol  of  our  spiritual  life.  The  trumpet 
you  saw  floating  upon  the  water  represents  our 
conscience;  the  white  fish  that  answered  to  the 
call  of  the  trumpet,  represent  acts  of  kindness  and 
charity  to  our  fellow  man  ;  the  pearls  and  gems 
which  formed  themselves  into  wreaths  and  crowns, 
are  but  the  legitimate  results  or  fruits  of  the  acts 


130  THE  A  UTHOR'S  VISION. 

of  kindness  and  charity,  which  are  to  deck  and 
crown  man  in  the  spirit- world." 

I  then  asked,  "  Who  is  this  angelic  form  that 
stands  before  me  ? "  With  an  accent  clear  and 
soft,  and  in  rich  and  impressive  tones,  never  to  be 
forgotten,  she  replied,  "Ah,  I  am  the  symbol  of 
Love,  that  heavenly,  spiritual  principle  that  flows 
down  from  Our  Heavenly  Father,  speaking  to  us 
through  our  conscience,  and  assuring  us  if  we  obey 
our  conscience  in  all  things  we  will  be  rewarded 
with  a  crown  in  the  spirit- world." 

I  then  asked  if  our  conscience  was  the  highest 
authority  and  best  guide  to  govern  us  in  this 
world.  She  paused  a  moment,  then  answered, 
"Yes,  an  enlightened  conscience,  with  the  light 
that  comes  from  Divine  truth,  is  the  surest  guide 
we  have  in  a  world  like  this." 

FINIS. 


TO    TORICS. 


PAGE 

Prefatory, i 

The  Book  of  Nature,           ---...  1 

Origin  and  Law  of  Matter  Forms,          ....  3 

Life  an  Endowment, 6 

The  Process  of  Development  in  Vegetable  and  Animal 

Life, 9 

The  Key  to  the  Law  of  Evolution,    ....  15 

The  Great  Law  of  Evolution, 23 

The  Advent  of  Man, 29 

Man's  Historical  Evolution, 32 

The  Factors  that  Make  Up  a  Nation,        ...  35 

The  World's  Great  Convention  Dispersed,  37 

The  Great  Kace  Monuments, 37 

The  Influence  of  Nature  in  the  Evolution  of  a  People,  -  44 

The  Complex  Forces  in  the  Formation  of  Nations,  -  49 

The  Evolution  of  Personal  Character,   ....  53 

Evolution  Through  Suffering, 62 

Suffering,  a  Method  of  Highest  Development,      -        -  72 

Medical  Science  and  Evolution,        ....  77 

Slavery  and  Emancipation  a  Method  of  Development,  80 

The  Key  to  the  Secret  Vault, 85 


INDEX  TO  TOPICS. 

Evolution  and  Environment,          -----  94 

The  Evolution  of  the  Soul  in  Sleep,          ...  100 

Death  a  Spiritual  Evolution,          -----  102 

Evolution  After  Death, •  105 

The  Law  of  Equivalence  in  the  Spirit- World,       -       -  105 
Progression— The  Divine  Method  of  Evolution  in  the 

_    Future,  113 

The  Capitol  of  the  Universe, 119 

Eecapitulation,    -------- 

The  Author's  Vision,       -       -       -       -       -       -       -  128 


14  DAY  USE 

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